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High School Fall Sports Season To Be ‘Challenging’
At our press time, Freedom High was expected to open its 2020 football season on Sept. 11, hosting its New Tampa neighbor and archrival Wharton High, but the toughest opponent for both teams to combat that night likely wasn’t each other.
It was Covid-19.
And, that doesn’t just go for football. Avoiding the virus is arguably the biggest challenge facing teams across Hillsborough County (and the country), as high school athletes, their coaches and administrators try their best to remain socially distant and safe in what is certain to be the strangest prep sports season ever.
“It’s going to be very…what’s the word I’m looking for? Intensive,” says Wharton athletic director Eddie Henderson “It’s going to be a lot of work.”
The county is following all CDC guidelines for sports and also has issued its own 18-page guide, which covers everything from daily cleaning and sanitizing to quarantining and tracing those who become infected. The rules, which include the difficult-to-enforce ban on handshakes and high fives, seek to prevent a major outbreak of the virus.
One of the rules that will make football feel very different is that the bands and cheerleaders will not be permitted to travel to away games. That means that when the Wharton Social Distancers traveled to take on the Freedom Social Distancers, they had to leave behind some of their loudest and most ardent supporters, not to mention a group that is woven into the very fabric of the Friday night football experience.
The crowds will be smaller. A limited number of fans will be allowed into sporting events like football and volleyball this fall — players (and band members) are allowed to choose only four spectators, but they have to be registered on a list at least a day before each game, so they can be issued electronic tickets. Each player’s foursome will be a “spectator pod” and will be required to sit together.
Fans, who must wear masks in the stands, will find seats clearly marked off in groups of four, socially distant from other pods.
The biggest hurdle, however, will be keeping the athletes healthy. If an athlete tests positive, he/she and anyone in close contact with them will be quarantined for 14 days. That can wipe out any team’s roster in a hurry.
Football will be a huge challenge, due to the unavoidable closer quarters presented by bus transportation and the sheer number of players (often ranging anywhere from 50 to 80 or so) cramming into small locker rooms.
The football teams at Hillsborough and Jefferson high schools have already had infected players and, as a result, may not be able to play the first two weeks of the season.
“I’m holding my breath, and the reason is that, when we’re putting this many people together, you just don’t know,” Henderson says.
While football is the biggest concern, every sport will present its own set of issues.
For example, cross country will have to stagger its starts to avoid large gatherings of runners from multiple schools. Volleyball players will be expected to avoid the traditional high-five after every point, and swim meets with multiple teams may be hard to find. In fact, Wharton’s usual “home” pool at the New Tampa YMCA is not permitting the Wildcats to host any meets there.
Provided that high school sports can make it all work under such unique and demanding circumstances, middle school sports will not begin until the second quarter, with track starting first on Oct. 12, followed by flag football and volleyball on Oct. 19.
“Everything is so uncertain,” Henderson says. “Are we gonna be able to push through or will there be a setback? I hope we can push through — I want to see the kids play. They have suffered enough the last six months with (the 2019-20 school year) getting cut short, and the makeshift way of doing school. I hope we push through.”
New Tampa Students, Teachers Get Back To School
Following a summer of indecision and fear of the unknown, New Tampa’s schools finally opened their doors to students for in-person learning for the first time since they closed in March due to Covid-19.
“Woo hoo!,” shouted one parent, as she drove off smiling after dropping her two kids off at Benito Middle School.
Students spent the first week of the 2020-21 school year eLearning only, as the fight over whether or not to open brick-and-mortar classrooms for students and teachers raged on.
The Hillsborough School Board initially leaned towards doing eLearning only for the first nine weeks, before settling for four weeks after consulting a panel of medical experts. However, that decision was then overturned by Superintendent Addison Davis, after Florida Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran threatened to withhold millions of dollars in funding to schools that did not offer a brick-and-mortar option for parents.
Busy at work cleaning and prepping their classrooms for a socially-distant learning experience, teachers finally opened the doors to their students on August 31.
After the first week, Chiles principal Teresa Evans said things went “remarkably well.” At Chiles, roughly 450 students were home learning online, while 400 or so learned in classrooms. Evans said none of her teachers were forced back into the classrooms, and praised their efforts in the opening week.
“I think we planned and planned and planned and what we planned has worked out so far,” Evans said. “The kids aren’t struggling with masks the way people thought. They have been very compliant, and the parents have been incredibly compliant and helpful in following the new rules.”
Those new rules include keeping desks as far apart from each other as possible, eating lunches outside under the school’s covered courts keeping everything as clean and sanitized as possible.
“We were nervous, but never terribly worried,” Evans says. “We were very careful and will continue to be, and we are tweaking things as we go.”
While the Covid-19 numbers were slightly rising in Hillsborough County during the first week, schools hadn’t reported any large outbreaks.
According to the school district’s Covid-19 dashboard, the first four days produced only 21 positive cases among students, and another nine from school staff.
The district is not reporting if any classrooms have been quarantined.
From March through July, the district reported 284 confirmed cases of Covid-19.
In New Tampa, the only schools to report any cases were Freedom High and Tampa Palms Elementary, with each reporting one student positive from the first day of school.
Three ‘Little Libraries’ Opening In Wiregrass Ranch
Wesley Chapel may not have its own Pasco County Library System branch at the moment — as the renovation project at the New River Library on S.R. 54 continues — but it could soon have three Little Free Libraries.
The Wiregrass Ranch Foundation recently unveiled the first two Little Free Libraries, which are small, birdhouse-looking book depositories that allow anyone to share and read free books.
Porter was on hand to cut the ribbon at Wiregrass Ranch’s first Little Free Library ribbon cutting on July 31. It is located between the Glory Days Grill and Max’s Natural Pet Market on S.R. 54. A second location is near the Culver’s on the north side of S.R. 56, while a location for a third book-sharing box is still being determined.
“JD (Porter, who founded the foundation) and I were chatting one that we wanted to do something where the community can get involved, but doesn’t have to be together, due to Covid-19,” says Amanda Blackmon, who does marketing for the foundation. “We were looking for something new and creative, and JD said, ‘What about a Little Library?’”
When it opened, the S.R. 54 location had a selection of books ranging from To Kill a Mockingbird to some of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series and even Good Morning, Moon. Users are encouraged to share their own books when taking one from the library.
“It is definitely about sharing books and bringing the community together,” Blackmon says, adding that the Wiregrass Ranch Foundation is encouraging those who are reading the Little Library books to share pictures and their thoughts on social media on Instagram at @littlefreelibrary_wc and on Facebook. “We wanted to get the conversation started,” she says.
Porter even suggested leaving notes in the books when you are done reading them, to be discovered by the next person who takes the book.
“It’s our hope that this Little Free Library will bring a little more joy, a little more connection and a whole lot more books to our community,” Porter said.
The locations in Wiregrass Ranch will be one of more than 100,000 book-sharing boxes world-wide.
Little Free Library is a nonprofit organization and received the 2020 World Literacy Award for its dedication to expanding access to books.
For more information, visit LittleFreeLibrary.org. For more info about the Wiregrass Ranch Foundation, visit WiregrassRanchFoundation.org. — JCC
Play Ball!
The Neighborhood News wasn’t the only news medium on hand in June of 2018 when Wiregrass Ranch developer JD Porter, four of the five Pasco County commissioners, Pasco County/“Florida’s Sports Coast” tourism director Adam Thomas, RADDSports president and founder Richard Blalock and several other local dignitaries threw some dirt in the air at the groundbreaking for a new indoor sports facility to be located just north of S.R. 56 and a mile or so from both the Shops at Wiregrass and AdventHealth Wesley Chapel.
Also in attendance that day were representatives of Mainsail Development, which was getting ready to build a Marriott-branded Residence Inn with Wesley Chapel’s first and only rooftop bar adjacent to the planned sports campus.
Fast forward to Aug. 15 of this year, when the Wiregrass Ranch Sports Campus of Pasco County held its first-ever Open House to show off the brand-spankin’-new, 98,000-sq.-ft., state-of-the-art indoor sports facility to local families. This time around, photographer/videographer Charmaine George and I were the only media folks on hand to let you know about it. And, let me just say…WOW!
The fulfillment of the dream Blalock (pointing in top right photo) has had for more than four years is everything anyone could possibly have hoped for — and really, so much more. Although I obviously am raving about it, since my wife Jannah is the director of marketing for the facility, I could be accused of being unfairly biased about it.
On the other hand, my favorite thing about the open house was walking around the facility, seeing the smiles (and often, gritty determination) on the young athletes’ faces, and hearing the buzz from all of the parents, all of whom were saying, “This is exactly what we need here.” They all let me know that I wasn’t alone in feeling the excitement that day.
“I’m speechless about the facility,” said parent and Wesley Chapel resident Yanet Hernandez. “It’s amazing. Very clean and there’s a vibe that you get when you walk into the gym.”
Hernandez also pointed out something heartwarming, something that Blalock says also is part of his vision for training young athletes to be not only the best athletes they can be, but also the best people (and teammates) they can be. “Seeing the (volleyball) girls of all races and backgrounds playing together, being so polite to each other — it’s just such a great atmosphere!”
Open House Nuts & Bolts
Blalock (top right photo) and his RADDSports team have been chomping at the bit to get open (despite all of the obvious Covid concerns; more on that below), and he said the main purpose of the Open House was to help the local community get acquainted with this unique facility and everything it has to offer.
Even though the Sports Campus will be bringing in tournaments in one of its four core sports — basketball, volleyball, cheerleading and soccer (both indoor and outdoor) — virtually every weekend, Blalock is equally excited about the programs that will be available just about every weekday throughout the year for local residents of all ages.
He says all levels of athletes, from as young as three years old to adults, will be able to enjoy the Sports Campus during the week, and young athletes have three different levels (Developmental, Competitive & Elite) of instruction and competition in all four core sports — with evaluations and programs for each beginning this month.
Meet The RADD-Star Team!
The Open House also was an opportunity for most attendees to meet the amazing team of directors who will help pick the teams and the coaches who will be running the programs and training the kids. Cheer directors Matt McDonough and Lyric Hill, volleyball director Eric Praetorius, basketball director Ronnie Outen and soccer director Stuart Campbell were all on hand at the event, running the day’s program and meeting all of the interested young athletes.
Hill and McDonough were helped with coaching and demonstrations of cheer stunts by the high school cheer squads from both Wiregrass Ranch and Cypress Creek high schools. Cheer participants even got to try their hands (and feet) on the 40-foot-long spring floor that looks very much like what Olympic gymnasts also use for training.
Praetorius brought in some of the truly outstanding high school volleyball players who have participated in other programs he has directed. The two volleyball courts set aside for the Open House were filled the entire four hours, with the elite players setting each other up to spike home winners and risking floor burns while diving on the shiny, new gym floor for digs, while everyone who was interested in the sport (no matter what level of player they were) received quick instructional tidbits from Praetorius and other coaches on hand — and lots of play time.
Outen somehow recruited an early morning adult full-court basketball game for the event, with separate full courts set aside for younger players. You could hear several parents and coaches cheering on the young hopefuls — including several talented girls, one of whom repeatedly did a great job of taking older, bigger boys to the hoop — from the sidelines.
And, although I left before he got there, Outen’s son Tyriq, a 6’-4” ice hockey goalie who recently was named the MVP of a major invitational tournament in Canada with his all-minority hockey team that was the surprise winner of the tournament, showed up to take pictures with his dad. We’ll tell you Tyriq’s story next issue.
And, you could just see soccer director Stuart Campbell, a former professional “footballer” in England (he’s actually of Scottish descent) and a former player and head coach for the Tampa Bay Rowdies — who probably is the RADDSports director who has most anticipated the day he can start actually coaching, rather than sitting in all-day meetings — absolutely beaming as he checked out the local soccer talent.
“This is quite an event,” Campbell said. “The kids are just loving the place!”
RADDSports director of programs Nicole Baker (another former cheerleader herself) also was on hand, doing temperature checks of everyone who entered the building, and helping Jannah and several volunteers make sure every participant signed an online or on-paper waiver before they entered the gym. There was plenty of hand sanitizer available and even though there were at least 300-400 people who stopped by at some point during the event, the spacious interior of the Sports Campus had plenty of space for social distancing.
One of my favorite things was the mezzanine, which has viewing available of the action in both Arenas A & B of the Sports Campus — each of which was designed for four basketball or eight volleyball courts. There’s also seating in the mezzanine overlooking the amazing cheer area.
The Wesley Chapel Hilton Garden Inn and Hampton Inn, two of the Sports Campus’ hotel partners, and Culver’s and Bubba’s 33 restaurants — which are located on S.R. 56 and stand to receive a lot of out-of-town business from the facility on the weekends — had tables inside the lobby to show their support for the RADDSports team (which has held most of its meetings at the Hilton during the construction).
“We had a few potential sponsors come through to check us out, too,” Blalock said. “I can’t even tell you how happy we are to be (almost) open.”
Pasco County Tourism, aka the Florida Sports Coast, was scheduled to hold the actual ribbon cutting for the Sports Campus on Aug. 27, which was after we went to press with this issue. RADDSports is the county’s private partner which is managing the building that was funded by a recent voter-approved 2-cent increase in the county’s tourism (or “bed”) tax.
“Play Ball,” indeed!
For sponsorship opportunities at the Wiregrass Ranch Sports Campus of Pasco County (3021 Sports Coast Way), email Jannah@RADDSports.com. For program information, email Nicole@RADDSports.com. For sponsorship opportunities at the Wiregrass Ranch Sports Campus of Pasco County (3021 Sports Coast Way), email Jannah@RADDSports.com. For program information, email Nicole@RADDSports.com. Also, you can call (833) TEAM-RADD (832-6723).