Locals Help The Bolts Bring Home The Cup!

Tampa Bay Lightning head trainer Tom Mulligan & chiropractor Tim Bain may not have laced ‘em up, but they did contribute to the second Stanley Cup in team history!

Tampa Bay Lightning head trainer Tom Mulligan (holding the Stanley Cup) and his family (l.-r., Tyler, Abby, Zachary & Kellie) finally got to celebrate Tom’s second Cup win with the Bolts on Sept. 30. (Photo provided by Tom Mulligan)

The first Tampa Bay Lightning game of the NHL postseason went to one overtime, then two, three, four and five.

In between periods, Arbor Greene resident Tom Mulligan, the team’s head trainer, scrambled to tend to cramps and injuries, keep the players hydrated and their energy levels up with grilled chicken, slices of pizza and bananas.

“It was controlled chaos in between periods,” Mulligan says.

And, unbridled joy afterwards. When Brayden Point scored the game-winning goal to give the Lightning the 3-2, five-overtime win over Columbus, it set off a raucous celebration and catapulted Tampa Bay on a run that would eventually lead to the team’s second Stanley Cup championship.

“That night, I felt this could be something special,” Mulligan says. “It was six hours, and just to see the controlled chaos in between periods was something. It really was all hands on deck. We still needed 15 more wins after that, but if that would have turned out differently, who knows what happens?”

The Lightning ended up getting those 15 wins. After dropping the first game of the Stanley Cup finals to Dallas, the Lightning won the next four, including a 2-0 shutout pitched by goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy to clinch the title.

For many, including Mulligan — one of the few staffers remaining from the 2004 crew that took home the team’s first Cup — it was a long time coming. There have been a series of close calls in recent years, including a conference finals loss in 2018 and mostly noticeably, a devastating sweep by Columbus in the first round last year after the team tied an NHL record with 62 wins.

“We won it in my second year in the NHL, and I thought, ‘This isn’t so bad,’” Mulligan says, chuckling. “We had most of the team back, we’re going to have more chances. Then the years start ticking by, players come and go, and you realize: it’s not that easy.”

Mulligan is still coming down off the high of his second cup. There are few things like hockey celebrations, and Mulligan says Tampa outdid itself with the homecoming boat parade along the Hillsborough River and subsequent party held at Raymond James Stadium.

The most recognizable trophy in sports, Mulligan says he is hoping to be able to bring the Stanley Cup to New Tampa. It is a tradition that each member of the organization gets to spend at least a day with the trophy. In 2004, he took the Cup to Massachusetts to share with his parents. 

While he is not sure of the parameters this year, due to Covid-19, he and wife Kelly have some ideas for a New Tampa celebration.

“That’s the plan,” he says.

But first, some family time is in order. Mulligan spent 65 days in the NHL bubble, first in Toronto and then in Edmonton.

Counting a few days of quarantining before he left Tampa, he was away from wife Kellie and their three children for a total of more than 70 days.

In 2004, only son Tyler had been born; he was 14 months old when the Lightning won the cup. Tyler is now 17-years old and a senior at Wharton, and since, brother Zachary, 15, and sister Abby, 13 have joined the family.

“It was really special coming home with the Cup and seeing them,” Tom says. He laments the sports and school events he has had to miss because of his job, and the bubble isolation made that even more difficult.

“They have had to make a lot of sacrifices over the course of their lives,” he says, but adds that they are all old enough now to truly appreciate what dad does and the significance of winning the Stanley Cup.

And, he was able to return home in time for Abby’s 13th birthday on Oct. 5. He told her before he left Edmonton he was bringing her a special present. 

“She probably won’t ever get another gift like it,” he says. — JCC

Dr. Tim Bain hoists the Stanley Cup.
(Photo provided by Dr. Tim Bain)

Bain Helps Victorious Bolts Deal With Aches & Pains

Wesley Chapel resident Tim Bain, D.C. (Doctor of Chiropractic), who has been the Lightning’s official team chiropractic physician since 2009, says he actually has been treating Lightning players since a year or two before the Bolts won their first Stanley Cup in 2004.

“I had just moved to the area and was living in West Meadows, along with a number of Lightning players, including Marty St. Louis, Nikolai Khabibulin and Fredrik Modin,” Bain says, “and Tom Mulligan, who was already the team’s trainer, started sending some of the players my way.”

Fast forward to the unique season of 2019-20, and both Mulligan and Bain were among the 52 players, coaches and staff sent by the Bolts to live in the NHL’s “bubble” in Toronto for this year’s no-fans, two-bubble (the other was in Edmonton) playoff format. And, when the Lightning emerged victorious 65 days after first entering the Toronto bubble, Dr. Bain was among those celebrating with the new Cup champs.

“There’s no doubt that hockey players are among the toughest of all professional athletes,” says Bain, whose office is in the Cory Lake Professional Center on Cross Creek Blvd. “They don’t like to come off the ice or complain about their aches and pains. But, once the team started to embrace the idea of chiropractic care, they could see that they could recover from injuries faster and get back on the ice even faster.” 

Bain adds that with the even-quicker-than-usual turnaround times between games (because of not having to travel) in this year’s playoff format, he was even busier caring for the players than usual. He also was the person responsible for conducting concussion protocols for the players who sustained head injuries. 

One of the Bolts’ players who attracted the most attention for his ongoing injury woes was, of course, team captain Steven Stamkos. Although the nature of his injury was never revealed, Bain says no one worked harder to get himself back into playing shape than Stammer.

“Even though he only played 2:47 in one game (Game 3 of the Cup final series against Dallas) of the entire playoffs,” Bain says, “I think the goal he scored while he was in there got the entire team as excited as the moment we won the Cup. Even though he ended up not seeing the ice again, he gave the whole team such a huge lift.”

Bain agrees with Mulligan that the hardest thing about their time in the bubble for all of the Lightning players and staff was being separated from their families for so long.

“I have a tendency to get homesick anyway, even just on road trips,” Bain says. “But, having to spend 70 days away from my wife and children was even harder. Especially when we shifted to the Edmonton bubble (for the last two playoff series), there was literally nothing for us to do. Being able to come home and celebrate winning the Cup with our families and the fans was so amazing.” 

And, Bain adds, the goal now is to “bring the Cup home again next year. It can’t be more challenging than this year has been.” 

He says that he plans to be on hand when next year’s team has to recover from injuries and everyday aches and pains. “I definitely hope to be part of another celebration!” — GN

Covid Can’t Keep Emerald M Ranch From Its Work

Lisa Michelangelo (left) with Brianna at the recent Derby Day celebration at the Hyatt Place Hotel in Wesley Chapel. (Photo courtesy of Lisa Michelangelo)

When Brianna, a Wesley Chapel teenager with Cerebral Palsy, graduated from high school in 2019, she could have rolled herself across the stage in the wheelchair she has been confined to for most of her life.

Instead, she walked.

For Lisa Michelangelo, who had helped make that miracle possible at her Emerald M Therapeutic Riding Center in Brooksville, it was the type of moment she lives for and why she does what she does.

“It was really one of the most awesome things I’ve seen,” Michelangelo says.

Michelangelo, formerly a physical therapist in New Tampa, founded the Emerald M ranch six years ago. Named for the stone that Michelangelo says stands for “hope, renewal and growth,” Emerald M offers physical therapy that incorporates hippotherapy, which utilizes the movement of horses for rehabilitative purposes.

It has been a godsend for many like Brianna. It was the first time any of her Center Academy classmates had ever seen Brianna walk. Thanks to the therapy she received at the Emerald M Therapeutic Riding Center, Brianna made her graduation one of the most memorable days of her life — and the same can be said about many of those in attendance.

“I can’t express how much doing this has changed my whole perspective,” Brianna said in a video that played at the Emerald M’s second annual Derby Day fund raiser earlier this month at the Hyatt Place Hotel in Wesley Chapel. “It’s definitely life changing. I believe that wholeheartedly. It was one of the best decisions me and my family ever made.”

The fund raiser, like Brianna’s graduation, was a hit. It raised more than  $20,000 to help the Emerald M ranch continue to provide its unique form of therapy.

Usually held on the same day as the Kentucky Derby in May, the fund raiser almost didn’t happen this year, due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“We were planning and then stopped planning and then started planning again,” says Michelangelo. “It was a real blessing to be able to do it.” 

The event was limited to 120 people, or half of capacity, and about 100 attended. Those not ready to venture out or concerned about the size of the crowd despite a host of coronavirus precautions taken by the hotel’s staff, the event also was streamed to provide a virtual experience.  

Because most of Emerald M’s participants are more susceptible to coronavirus, the 20-acre ranch had to shut down in March, and re-opened in June. It features 10 horses, and more than a dozen volunteers.

The center, a 501(c)3 nonprofit, usually hosts two fund raisers a year — the Derby Day event in May, which was moved to September 5, and a gala dinner in October, which had to be cancelled.

“Derby Day did not offset the gala, but we did benefit with twice what we raised at Derby Day last year,” Michelangelo says. “That is tremendous. It puts us in a much better place moving forward.”

Source: EmeraldMTherapeuticRidingCenter.org

According to Michelangelo, hippotherapy, or equine-assisted therapy, is a growing and effective way to improve one’s coordination, balance and strength, especially in cases with children suffering from Cerebral Palsy.

According to the American Hippotherapy Association, Inc., and others, the horse’s pelvis and hips move in the same way as a human’s. By riding on a horse and maintaining balance, sometimes even riding sideways and even by sitting backwards, the movement of the horse is channeled to the brain and can enhance neuromuscular development.

Not only does it help build things like strength and control, it has various sensory benefits and also helps improve motor skills.

Sarah Clanton spent the first five years of her life with nothing. She existed chained to a bed in the Ukraine, and when she was adopted by Yvonne and her husband Jon Clanton, she could barely sit up by herself.

Sarah is one of the Emerald M Therapeutic Riding Center’s most successful patients, who despite being blind and mentally underdeveloped, is now walking with assistance and responding to instructions and showing major improvement in her motor skills, thanks to hippotherapy.

Emerald M has participants who suffer from autism, processing disorders, emotional disorders, cerebral palsy, paralysis and brain tumors. It also offers beginner horseback riding lessons for siblings of program participants, which helps keep everyone in the family involved.

The center also offers therapeutic adaptive riding, which is more recreational and teaches someone with a disability horsemanship skills and how to ride.

Regardless of the help needed, Michelangelo says there’s a good chance they can provide it at Emerald M.

“I love what I do,” Michelangelo says. “It doesn’t feel like therapy. We’re out in a recreational environment, and once the kids get on the horses, I’m golden because they don’t ever want to get off.”

Emerald M Riding Center is located at 4022 Goldsmith Rd. in Brooksville. For more information or to donate, visit EmeraldMTherapeuticRidingCenter.org, or call (352)-244-7471. 

Water Park for The Grove?

A potential water park at The Grove in Wesley Chapel would be similar to something like Splash Harbour Water Park in Indian Rocks Beach..

Jamie Hess hadn’t even opened his dueling piano bar, Treble Makers, before he was on to the next thing.

A water park for The Grove?

“I get bored easily,” Hess jokes.

According to Hess, he was having a conversation with Gold only about a month back when the developer asked what he thought about the idea of a water park, which could be built on 1.8 acres next to the Chuck E. Cheese’s.

I thought it was absolutely brilliant,” Hess said, who went ahead and jumped in as the point man on the project. He signed a letter of intent that day.

Hess says it wasn’t hard to convince him. After all, he was the first person to sign a lease with Gold. (Note – Double Branch Artisanal Ales had actually signed with the previous owners shortly before Gold bought the property.)

“I think his vision for this area is great,” Hess says. “I wanted to be a part of it right from the beginning.”

The water park will not be sprawling like Tampa’s Adventure Island, but will be family-oriented, says Gold, and small enough where parents will have no trouble keeping an eye on their kids.

Hess says he envisions the park as something similar to Splash Harbour Water Park in Indian Rocks Beach, but larger — Splash Harbour is on roughly 1.3 acres, compared to the 1.8 acres planned for The Grove’s water park.

The Grove park will have a lazy river and a variety of slides and splash zones. It won’t need a mini-golf course like Splash Harbour, because Gold is building a standalone course as part of his theater complex.

The water park will have season passes, as well as one-day and four-hour passes. Although it is still very early in development, a one-day pass might cost $25, with a four-hour pass running $16. Season passes will be “very very reasonable” according to Hess.

He adds that he is in the feasibility phase and, once that is determined, the design phase begins, followed by permitting.

Within a year, Hess says, the park could be ready and he has already shown the county pictures of what he has planned and, “they were enthusiastic.” 

COMEDY GOLD!

There’s already a taproom, dueling piano bar and mini-golf, and a unique movie theater and a container park are on the way to The Grove. But, if you think developer Mark Gold of Mishorim Gold is done, it looks like the joke might be on you!

Side Splitters Comedy Club will be bringing the same nationally-known comics. like America’s Got Talent finalist Preacher Lawson, to its Wesley Chapel location that it regularly schedules in Tampa.

Two guys walk into a bar.

One guy says, “Hey, how would you like to bring your comedy club to The Grove theater in Wesley Chapel?”

The other guy says, “Hey yeah, that sounds like a great idea. Let’s do it!”

Okay, so that’s not much of a joke — we’ll leave that to the pros, who will be headed to Wesley Chapel in a few months, when the renowned Side Splitters Comedy Club opens a its second location in The Grove on S.R. 54.

Developer Mark Gold, who is redeveloping The Grove into an entertainment space unrivaled in the area, says he has forged a deal with Brian Thompson, the owner of Side Splitters in Carrollwood, to bring a full-fledged stand-up comedy club to the area before the end of 2020.

As part of the former Cobb theater’s dramatic makeover — which already is set to include a huge video game area, a high-tech spin room, theaters that cater to kids and moviegoers and two new restaurants — Side Splitters Comedy Club will take over one of the theaters for its stand-up shows.

“We have gotten a ton of requests to get another location and Wesley Chapel is one of the areas with the most requests,” says Thompson. “We know it’s a growing area and, when the opportunity came up to get in there, we took it. We see it as a win-win for both of us.”

And, for the record, Gold and Thompson didn’t forge the deal at a bar. Instead, Thompson, who says he has been unofficially scouting the Wesley Chapel area for years, came across a 3-D video online showing the new things happening at The Grove and inquired about any vacancies.

He was told one unit was available, but it was smaller than what he was looking for, so he declined.

However, five minutes later, after Gold found out a comedy club had called — just what he had been looking for — the developer arranged to meet with Thompson that same day.

“He said he was one of the top comedy clubs in the U.S.,” Gold says. “I had a theater available in what will be an entertainment complex. It’s perfect. It’s a good fit.”

April Macie has performed at Side Splitters Comedy Club, as well as on Netflix.

While the original Side Splitters is a 5,500-sq.-ft. location and seats 250 patrons at tables and chairs below the stage, the comedy theater at The Grove will seat roughly 170 above the stage, with food and drink service.

“It will be a little different, but it will be the same intimate feel of Side Splitters that people dig,” says Thompson met with Gold’s management company this past week to hammer out the details.

Thompson, who was the general manager at Side Splitters since 2007 before buying the club in 2019, says it draws 70,000-80,000 people a year while mostly holding shows Thursdays through Sundays. That built-in audience is likely to translate nicely to the Wesley Chapel location, which also happens to be the home of some of Side Splitters’ more popular comics, like Rahn Hortman and JB Ball.

Side Splitters Carrollwood has hosted a number of nationally-known comics, and Thompson says some of those big names also will come to Wesley Chapel.

“We’ll definitely get comedians with some strong TV credits — some late night appearances, “America’s Got Talent,” “Last Comic Standing” — people like that,” Thompson says.  

Open mic nights also are popular at the club and will carry over to The Grove.

“It’s a nice partnership,” Thompson says. “Mark’s vision is having a one-stop shop, where people can walk around, grab dinner, play a round of golf and see a comedy show, without having to get in their cars to drive to each place. We’re very very excited to be part of that.” 

Zooming Through An Awesome Community Meeting On Racism

So, I certainly didn’t know what to expect when 21 people got together for the first-ever New Tampa and Wesley Chapel Zoom community meeting on racism on August 25, but I have to say that it was shocking, eye-opening, disheartening and heartwarming all at the same time.

How could it possibly have been all of those things at once? 

It was shocking because, from my meeting co-host — District 63 State Rep. Fentrice Driskell — to military veteran April Lewis to my friend Nikii Lewis (all shown on this page), some of the stories told by the black and white people alike who participated in that meeting showed just how prevalent dealing with racism in our area and this country truly is and seemingly always has been.

It was shocking for me to hear that Rep. Driskell, a Harvard University and Georgetown Law-educated Tampa-based attorney originally from Polk County, has been assumed to be either the court reporter or the client/defendant as often as she has been assumed to be the lawyer.

It was eye-opening to hear Nikii, who lives in a mostly white neighborhood in Wesley Chapel, tell the story about her six-year-old daughter, who told her — at age 3 — that she’s afraid of white people, and that when her daughter was drawing pictures of people, she wouldn’t use a brown crayon because, she said,  she wanted the people “to look normal.”

And, it was disheartening to hear that April Lewis, a recent transplant to New Tampa who is suffering from PTSD after six years in the Army with two deployments, who also is a Gold Star wife whose husband was killed in Iraq, doesn’t feel safe when she walks into a store and doesn’t feel the same equality as I do.

But, the Zoom meeting also was heartwarming because several of the attendees who were white said that they were participating because they felt the need to do something in the wake of the recent shootings of black people like George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Jacob Blake and others by law enforcement officials and the civil unrest that has followed those incidents across this country.

When I organized the event I didn’t know what my goal was — and I still don’t — but I do know that I truly do not want it to stop there.    

“I can’t even tell you how many times, as an attorney in court, that people have assumed that I was the court reporter or the defendant.” — State Representative Fentrice Driskell

“If my black skin is good enough to fight for this country, I can’t understand why my blackness isn’t good enough to receive the same equality as everyone else.” — New Tampa resident & Gold Star wife April Lewis.

“In one of the neighborhoods where Ronnell grew up in Tampa, there was an elementary school called Robert E. Lee Elementary, and that was just considered a normal thing. And, for too long, it was considered taboo to even talk about racism, so meetings like this are definitely a step in the right direction.” — Live Oak residents Ronnell & Brittaney Curtis

“When the George Floyd incident originally started, there were people in our own neighborhood patrolling in golf carts and (carrying) guns, which was kind of concerning to us.” — Wesley Chapel residents Sara & Kyle Hill

“My son is half Hispanic and it was only recently he told us he was discriminated against in school. When I asked why he never told us, he said he didn’t think my wife and I would believe him.” — New Tampa hotel owner David Larson

“I was working as a prosecutor in Pasco County and got pulled over by a cop because prosecutors have their plates blocked out. He didn’t believe I was a prosecutor until he called one of my associates he knew who told him I was.” — Attorney & Wesley Chapel resident Cornelius Demps

“I grew up in a small town in southeastern Pennsylvania and we had no black people in our town. I remember we had a community pool and we were going to have a swim meet at the pool , but people in the town were concerned that something bad would happen if black people from other communities would be swimming in the pool. I wasn’t raised that way and I remember being shocked that anyone would think something like that.” — New Tampa resident Donna Harwood

“I worked as a speech language pathologist in the Pasco elementary schools and I am learning a lot about racial injustice in this country. I would like to do something about helping to change that situation, but I realize that (as a white person) I can’t lead that but I am here to learn and follow..” — New Tampa resident Naomi Lang-Unnasch.