Former Wharton High basketball star Shawn Vanzant is trying to lead the Wildcats back to the State tournament. (Photos by Mike Bitting)
If you were wondering if things would be any different for the Wharton High basketball team playing under a new coach for the first time in two decades, you can stop wondering.
In this year’s first game at home under new coach Shawn Vanzant, the Wildcats used an aggressive attacking defense that produced a slew of steals that they turned into a withering onslaught of three-pointers and transition buckets to open up a 28-7 lead en route to a 73-40 win over Steinbrenner High.
“Not much has changed,” says junior point guard Lucean Milligan, who had three steals and 10 points in the first quarter.
Indeed. The Wildcats were off to a 10-1 start heading into the Christmas break.
Wharton made a winner of Vanzant, who was making his home debut as the Wildcats’ new head basketball coach after taking over for Tommy Tonelli, Hillsborough County’s all-time winningest coach.
In a gym where Vanzant once starred as arguably the program’s greatest player ever, it felt as if he, or even Tonelli, had never left.
“Easy transition; I think it’s the best option we could have had,” says senior forward Chandler Davis. “He played here, and he played at a high level at Butler (University in Indianapolis, IN).”
Vanzant is a great story that just keeps on getting better. The Wildcats added the latest chapter by beating the Warriors.
“I’m not gonna lie, it was a special moment,” Vanzant said afterwards. “I played four years here, coach Tonelli was like a father figure (to me). It was like a welcome home party.”
Karmello Branch goes up for two of his 16 points in the home-opening win over Steinbrenner.
The following night reminded Vanzant there is still work to do. The Wildcats laid an egg against a good Newsome team that returns a lot of size and experience, losing 48-39, but are currently on a seven-game winning streak.
There is no question that Vanzant is the man for the job. Tonelli, it seems, had waited for this moment for a few years, the chance to hand his program off to his star pupil. He wanted someone who could coach, sure, but it was more important to find someone who could lead, which life surely has prepared Vanzant to do.
As a kid, Vanzant’s family fell apart due to a myriad of problems, including his mother’s death right before his second birthday. As a teenager, midway through his high school career, he ran out of living options until New Tampa resident Lisa Litton and her family took him in.
As a high school star, Vanzant led Wharton to a 29-2 record in 2007 and, three years later, he helped Butler get to within two points of the 2010 NCAA Championship, which they were denied 61-59 by Duke University and its legendary coach Mike Kryzewski.
After a pro career spent mostly overseas, Vanzant turned to coaching and helped turn perennial basketball loser Bloomingdale High into a playoff team.
Now, he’s back home.
Vanzant and the Wildcats, regarded as one of the best teams in the Tampa Bay area, are expected to win many more, as they are coming off a 28-3 season and the program’s second Class 6A State Semifinal appearance.
Although Vanzant has the same distaste for polls as his predecessor — “They don’t mean anything” –—the Wildcats entered this season ranked by various online sites as one of the top-three teams in Tampa Bay.
“We have some things to work on, but if we do that, we’ll be good,” Vanzant said.
Milligan, a slick playmaker who can score in bunches, the 6’-5” Davis, last year’s top postseason scorer, and senior guard Christian Ayala are all key returners from the State Semifinal team.
Senior forward Karmello Branch is another player who played at States last season, but for Class 3A Tampa Catholic. He transferred back to New Tampa.
Sophomore guard Nick Womack played for Vanzant at Bloomingdale last year, and sophomore guard Jayson Montgomery is making the transition to varsity this season look easy after scoring 16 in the home opener.
Vanzant loves what he sees so far, especially the team camaraderie and togetherness.
“Tonelli laid the groundwork, and we have a lot of guys from last year’s Final Four team,” Vanzant says. “All I have to do is come in here and not mess it up.”
Milligan and Davis both say there is no chance of that happening, because if there’s one thing that isn’t different with the change of coaches, it’s the Wildcats’ mindset.
The Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) recently announced that, for the first time, all of the lanes at the Diverging Diamond Interchange (DDI) at S.R. 56 and Exit 275 of I-75 are now open.
According to FDOT, a fourth westbound land on S.R. 56 was opened on Oct. 31, along with a third left turn lane from the northbound I-275/I-75 exit ramp onto westbound S.R. 56.
Work is still continuing on the interchange as crews put the final touches on the $33.6-million project, so FDOT continues to urge caution for travelers making their way through the new intersection. Other than some clean-up items the DDI is considered complete.
The project began construction in Jan. 2019, far ahead of its original schedule, and despite the first construction company being dismissed from the project (and later going out of business), the new company, Superior Construction Company Southeast, LLC, has managed to exceed expectations for finishing the job before year’s end.— JCC
The new rescue truck at Fire Station No. 21 will help those in major motor vehicle accidents who need more assistance than a typical rescue vehicle can provide. (Photo: Tampa Fire Rescue)
While City of Tampa Fire Rescue (TFR) Chief Barbara Tripp wrestles with ways to improve fire rescue response times in New Tampa, our area has received its first-ever “mini-heavy” rescue (MHR) truck.
The MHR truck, which is similar to the heavy rescue fire rescue trucks but is smaller and designed for technical rescues, will run out of TFR Fire Station No. 21, the Cross Creek Blvd. station closest to Bruce B. Downs (BBD) Blvd.
The new truck, part of the department’s special operations division, will work in concert with the larger fire rescue trucks and will be manned by Tampa Fire Rescue (TFR) firefighters who are trained in urban search and rescue.
“That apparatus basically has more technical tools to assist with major incidents, such as a major vehicle accident that people need to be extricated from,” says TFR spokesperson Vivian Shedd. “Think of it as a giant tool box, with lots of things you don’t normally use. But, when you need it, you are glad you have it because it makes the rescue go that much faster.”
The truck is equipped with the Jaws of Life, cutters and spreaders “and other tools for rope rescues and things of that nature” that aren’t on every fire rescue truck, Shedd adds.
Because the truck is for specialty rescues that don’t happen as often, it doesn’t specifically address the recent reports about fire rescue times in New Tampa. However, it is an important addition for Station No. 21, considering that the area is heavily reliant on major traffic areas like I-75 and BBD that are prone to major accidents.
An accident requiring the life-saving services of an MHR truck would have to typically wait 15-20 minutes, or more (depending upon the time of day), for one to arrive from downtown Tampa.
“This is why we saw the need and brought it over to New Tampa,” Shedd says. “People in those kind of accidents don’t have time to wait.”
Tampa City Councilman Luis Viera, who represents North and New Tampa in District 7, has been an advocate for more help at New Tampa’s four fire stations, and says the MHR truck is a great addition.
“This vehicle came after a lot of lobbying from me and our friends in Tampa Firefighters Local 754,” Viera says. “I appreciate them and so does New Tampa. Fire Rescue response times are a huge issue for me for New Tampa. This investment addresses this. We got this vehicle funded this past year and I got another $1,000,000 in the budget for response times this year.”
Viera says he hopes to see even more assistance in the future to help reduce rescue times in New Tampa, which rank among the worst in Tampa. Shedd says that the problem is high on Chief Tripp’s to-do list.
“One thing our fire chief has stressed that is very important to her are response times,” Shedd says. “She is deeply committed to making sure that we are able to respond to any emergency as quickly as possible…there is still more to be done, and we are looking into additional resources (to improve those times.)”
Today marks the 20th anniversary of Wharton High’s only appearance in a State Championship football game, when Southern Cal Hall of Famer and former Tampa Bay Buccaneers linebacker Richard “Batman” Wood led the Wildcats to within a few points of immortality.
Head coach Richard “Batman” Wood led the Wildcats through an improbable season, ending with a loss in the Class 5A state championship.
Sometimes, when he closes his eyes, Wilbur Joseph says he can still feel the cool air drying the sweat on his forehead, his teammates lined up next to him on the Wharton Stadium goal line, their bodies facing north.
“North,” head coach Richard Wood would say. “That’s where Tallahassee is. That’s where the State Championship game is played. That’s where we’re headed.”
Twenty years later, Joseph still gets chills. “The memory is still fresh,” he says, almost breathless. “Still vivid. Oh…man.”
In 2002, in just its fifth year of existence, the Wharton High football team did what no other Wildcats football team has done since, shocking Tampa Bay with an improbable run, all the way north, to Tallahassee.
In the Class 5A championship game that year at Doak Campbell Stadium, however, the plucky, scrap-iron Wildcats lost to Pompano Beach Ely 22-10, a heart-crushing loss to end a heartwarming season that no one on that team will ever forget.
“I told them, ‘You know, there’s 67 counties in the state of Florida, and here we are, one of the only teams who have made a championship game,” says Wood, a former Tampa Bay Buccaneers star linebacker (1976-84) known as “Batman.” “And we’ve only been around a few years. Schools that have been here, in this state, for maybe 50, 60 years, haven’t been in this game. And, here we are. So, we can be proud. We can be proud that we (can say), ‘Hey, we did it!’”
Wood, now 69 and a defensive coach at Tampa Catholic High for the past decade, says those words probably didn’t mean as much to a team of heartbroken boys fighting back tears as they do today.
“I know it was tough,” Wood says, “because I cried my heart out, too.”
The 2002 Wildcats were, quite simply, special. They didn’t boast a bevy of Division I talent, they weren’t loaded with highly-rated transfers, and not a single player on the roster had even made the honorable mention All-County team the previous season.
But, they were flush with grit and determination, finishing with a 13-2 record.
“That was our first winning season in school history,” says wide receiver Michael Coonce, now an engineer living in Tampa. “Going into the season, we didn’t have any expectations around us. So, we rallied around each other, we took pride in shutting people up. We still talk about it today.”
Up to that point, Wharton’s biggest victories were moral ones for not getting blown out of games. The players were even made fun of in school.
Quarterback Ross Corcoran shows off his scrapbook from the 2002 season.
Quarterback Ross Corcoran, one of four first-team All-County players from that team, says he remembers a teacher cutting a picture out of the sports section showing a disheveled Corcoran after being sacked for the fifth time in a game, and pasting it all over his desk.
But, in 2002, everything changed.
“Once we beat Armwood and Hillsborough that year, everyone jumped on the train,” says Corcoran, adding that people would walk up to him at the Publix on Cross Creek Blvd. to congratulate him after a win. “It was like ‘Friday Night Lights.’”
Corcoran, who no lives in Oldsmar and works in the mortgage industry, returned to Wharton to try his hand at coaching for a few years, but it wasn’t the same.
“I find myself thinking back to that year a lot,” he says. “I don’t want to be all Al Bundy about it, but you know.”
Bundy, the iconic sitcom father from the hit Fox-TV show “Married With Children,” could never stop bragging about scoring four touchdowns in the city championship game for the Polk High Panthers. But, Corcoran would rather talk about his teammates.
Larry Edwards
Tackles Joseph (1st team All-County) and Will Russell and center Jason Novisk (Honorable Mention) bulldozed defenses, while running backs Larry Edwards and Joe Hall (1st team) ran over them and Coonce (HM) ran around them as a top wideout.
The defensive line, anchored by nose tackle Kendric Morris, cleared the way for Edwards to wreak havoc from his linebacker position, where he had 14 sacks, was named Hillsborough County’s Defensive MVP by The Tampa Tribune, and earned a scholarship to the University of North Carolina, where he was named All-ACC.
Senior defensive backs Chris Wilson and Chris Ellick (both 2nd team) were ballhawks in the secondary. Defensively, the Wildcats were “insane,” Corcoran says.
“That was a true family,” says then-assistant coach David Mitchell, who later served as the Wharton head coach for more than a decade before retiring in 2020. “Coaches all say that, but this really was. There was really just a little something different about them.”
Wood, who was a defensive assistant while working as the Wharton school resource officer in 1997, took over the program after Dan Acosta was fired two games into the 1998 season. If there ever was a missing piece, it was Wood.
“When principal Mitch Muley offered me the job, I said, ‘Are you serious?,’” Wood recalls. “If I do it, it’s gonna be tough. I’m a Vince Lombardi guy. I was coached by John McKay (at USC). I’m old school.”
It turns out that Muley was serious, and Wood took the job and said, “Give me a few years.” The ‘Cats won two games in each of his first two seasons, then four games in 2001 before Wood was able to set his sights north.
Wood had 31 seniors in 2002, and he said it was just one of those magical combinations that come together, sometimes just once in a lifetime.
“You know, here you are, you have kids from the inner city, and then you have kids that live in the suburbs, and they treated each other like they were brothers,” Wood says. “You could see it all the time. They loved each other. And, all I wanted for them was to help them win.”
And, win they did, opening the season with a 37-6 victory over Robinson. Wharton lost just once, 10-7 to a Chamberlain team that played for the Class 5A State Championship the year before, but won their final six regular season games in dominant fashion.
“They don’t have any weaknesses,” coach Earl Garcia said at the time, prior to his Hillsborough team losing to the Wildcats 21-0 the night Wharton clinched its playoff spot.
After that game, Wood flew to Los Angeles to be inducted into the USC Hall of Fame in a ceremony at the L.A. Coliseum. For some of his players, it was the first time they found out their coach was the only three-time All-American in the storied history of the Trojans. “Coach was a real-life superhero,” Corcoran says. “He just didn’t walk around telling everyone.”
In the Class 5A playoff opener, Wharton had to travel to Melbourne because the ‘Cats were the district runner-up behind Chamberlain. Its season nearly ended 150 miles away, but Corcoran hit wide receiver Jovan Mitchell for a 27-yard touchdown with 8 minutes remaining. A pair of defensive stands secured the 14-13 win.
The next week, Wharton beat Durant 20-14, as Hall and Edwards both went over 100 yards rushing and Edwards scored with 5 minutes left.
After beating Lakeland 27-7 before 4,300 fans at Wharton Stadium, the Wildcats hosted the State Semifinal against Daytona Beach Mainland.
The 30-3 win still remains as the greatest game in Wharton football history.
Corcoran threw for 212 yards — 126 of those and a touchdown to Coonce —Edwards had four sacks and Hall returned a fumble 75 yards for a touchdown.
Wood fought back tears afterwards. He had played on television and in a Rose Bowl and NFL playoff games, but this game hit him like no other.
“This was the greatest game of our lives — the kids’ lives and my life,” he told reporters. “Truly, by far, the greatest.”
The Class 5A State Championship game was not as great. Wharton came out flat against Ely — losing two fumbles, throwing an interception and dropping a touchdown pass on its first five possessions — and fell behind 15-3 at halftime.
“I definitely don’t want to take anything away from them, they had two All American offensive linemen and an All-American running back, but playing in a stadium that big and kind of being out of routine and all the extra stuff around the game took us out of sync,” Coonce says. “It took us a quarter-plus to start playing right.”
Hall capped an 86-yard drive with a TD run on Wharton’s first possession of the second half, to make it 15-10. The three bus loads full of Wharton fans grew louder.
But, despite a strong defensive effort, Ely’s star running back, Tyrone Moss, broke free for a 55-yard TD with four minutes remaining for the winning score and with 210 yards rushing.
Corcoran, Joseph, Coonce and probably every Wildcat on that roster insists to this day that Wharton should have won that game. Take away a few miscues and some bad luck, and Wharton would — and should — have been crowned State champions.
Mitchell remembers coming home from Tallahassee the next day, grabbing the mail and flinging it across the room once he got inside. To this day, he has not watched a replay of the game.
Time, however, heals many wounds.
“That was the highlight of my life,” Joseph says. “I think about it all the time. I still see some of the guys I played with, and we always end up talking about it — the games, the bus rides. That was an amazing feeling. You felt like it was never going to end. It was like living in a fairy tale. In the moment, you don’t realize how significant it is. But, it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
Almost every day, someone tells me, “Oh, I don’t read anything in print anymore. I get all of my news and information from online sources (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) only. Haven’t you heard that print is dead?”
I’ve written about this before, but after the whirlwind pre-holiday rush of new ads — and literally dozens of new requests for our advertising information — I’ve had over the past several months and, especially, the last two weeks, if print really is dead, my question is, why the seemingly neverending, and even increasing, requests for ads in the New Tampa and Wesley Chapel Neighborhood News?
Among the good news, for us, is that so many of the people opening new businesses in either of our distribution areas also live in those areas. So many of the people who have called, emailed or requested advertising info on our website recently have told me that not only do they read us, they look upon us as what I have long been calling us — the primary source of “real” news and information for and about the residents and businesses in and near New Tampa and Wesley Chapel.
Others requesting our information who don’t necessarily live in one of our distribution areas have been told by their friends or business associates who do live in one of those areas that ours are the ONLY publications they receive at their homes that they actually read, and that they trust the veracity of our news and the responsible reporting we provide about our areas more than any other source — print, broadcast or online.
Speaking of online sources — I would be lying if I said that we don’t utilize local Facebook communities and other online media sources as sources of some of the stories we ultimately put in print. The difference, however, is that we don’t just look stuff up online or offer our mean-spirited opinions without actually speaking with the sources of those stories (or, in many cases, attending or watching the government meetings regarding those stories).
Managing editor John Cotey and I are not online “trolls” — we’re not looking to make obnoxious comments about anyone’s honest requests for information or to rip into a business because we see ourselves as “anonymous.” To the contrary, we’re both trained journalists with decades of combined experience who put our names on everything we write and publish, whether in print or online.
Likewise, our freelance writers, particularly correspondent Celeste McLaughlin, also have years of working with us, so they know that if they make claims on behalf of our clients in the Business Features we publish (in every issue and online) that don’t ring true or need to be clarified, that I, as the editor, will make sure those questions and concerns are answered to my satisfaction and/or clarified properly.
This completely-hands-on approach to editing isn’t easy, but it is both my responsibility and pleasure to make sure that when we tell you about the businesses who are seeking your business, that the stories we publish about them are true, to the very best of our ability to verify that information. And, the fact that so many of our advertisers always have (for the past 29 years) and continue to tell us every day that the stories we’ve published about them have brought them in more response and more new customers than any other medium is proof that our approach continues to work.
So, if you want to continue to believe that “print is dead,” that’s your prerogative, but if you appreciate journalism that is based on facts and solid research, and opinion pieces (like this one and my dining reviews) that present viewpoints that arise out of years of knowledge and experience, as well as research, I hope you’ll not only continue to read us but also tell your friends and neighbors about us. And, most important of all, please tell any of the dozens of businesses that spend money to advertise with us that you heard about them because, as a reader of the Neighborhood News, you know that “Print ISN’T dead!”
Speaking of new advertisers, here is a listing of the businesses in this issue who only recently began buying ads with us. We hope you’ll spend your hard-earned money with them (and our longer-term advertisers) and feel free to let us know that you did — even (or perhaps, especially) if those businesses fall short of your expectations, rather than go online to criticize them without at least giving me (and them) the opportunity to makes things right with you, if at all possible.
Here are those new (and relatively new) advertisers who would had ads in our last two issues and would love to hear from you that “Print isn’t dead!”
Apex Internal Medicine Bloomin’ Blinds Cafe Zorba Champa Chicken Darlin Lash & Beauty Bar Edward Jones Tampa Palms Edward Jones Zephyrhills Enviroserv Pest Management Florida Heritage Insurance Grace Episcopal Church GrassWorks Newsom Eye North Tampa Law Group Oriental Rug Care The Legacy Studio. Peak TRT and Wellness
