HE JUST WINS

Tennis players Kanishkh Ramesh and Destiny Okungbowa (left) and soccer players Jake Bierhorst and Malcom Lewis (right) flank their coach, Dave Wilson (center).

Tampa Bay is littered with high school coaches who have built sports dynasties, at places like Plant and Armwood for football, Tampa Jesuit for baseball and St. Petersburg Lakewood for basketball.

Rare, however, is the coach who not only builds one dynasty, but simultaneously builds two.

In fact, the only boys soccer and tennis coach Wiregrass Ranch High (WRH) has ever known, Dave Wilson, may be in a class by himself, especially in Pasco County.

Wilson, who also is the school’s athletic director, has guided the boys soccer team to the state playoffs this season and the Bulls haven’t dropped a regular season game to a Pasco County opponent since January of 2013, a streak of 50 games. That run includes five trips to the Regional playoffs, including a State semifinal appearance in 2015. 

Last month, Wilson’s Bulls beat Steinbrenner 2-0 for the 200th win of his career.

Meanwhile, the tennis team, which opened its season Feb. 12 against Cypress Creek, has been even better. The Bulls are currently on a 125-match regular-season winning streak, including 96 straight wins against Pasco County competition since a loss to Land O’Lakes in 2010. That run includes State championships in 2014 and 2015, as well as a runner-up finish in 2017.

Kanishkh Ramesh (and his brother) have been a part of the Bulls long winning streak.

When it comes to playing its local competition, the taste of defeat is an unfamiliar one for Wilson.

“I think about it, but I don’t think our guys think about it all that much,” Wilson says with a chuckle, adding, “except for the fact that I don’t think they want to be the team that has that first loss to a Pasco opponent.”

An Athletic Background

Wilson is a Falls State, NY, native, who grew up as a multi-sport athlete and attended the State University of New York (SUNY) College at Cortland (aka Cortland State) in Cortland, NY, where he was a regional All-American soccer player, played basketball and competed for the track team in the triple jump.

Competition has always been a part of Coach Wilson’s life. But coaching? He says that is, and always has been, where his true passion has burned. 

“I never wanted to do anything other than coaching,” Wilson says. “My brothers both took great jobs and make lots of money, but that was never a draw for me.” 

He adds, with a chuckle: “Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to be rich and everything. But, I enjoy every day of my life, coming to practice and going to the games. When you’ve been an athlete all your life, and you still get to wake up in the morning and say, ‘Alright, it’s game day,’  there is nothing better than that.”

Wilson, 54, got his first coaching experience as a senior in college, when he joined the Tompkins Cortland Community College (in Tompkins, NY) basketball staff as an assistant, he moved from there to SUNY Binghamton (in Binghamton, NY) where he was the head women’s basketball and soccer coach for 10 years, before moving to Florida to serve as the head women’s basketball coach at Saint Leo University outside of Dade City beginning in 1999. 

However, after a few years at Saint Leo, with a wife and young children, the travel for games, long hours and recruiting trips started to wear on Wilson. 

He knew he wanted to make a change, so he stepped down from coaching at Saint Leo in 2002 and spent four years as an elementary school physical education teacher. The itch to coach competitively, though, never went away, and when WRH opened in 2006, he jumped at the chance to get back into coaching. 

For someone who sees coaching as a calling, there can be no bigger challenge than launching a program, building a tradition and finding success. Wilson got that chance when he took the job as both the boys soccer and boys tennis coach at the new school.

And success? That has not been a problem for Wilson and his team at WRH. He says that winning never gets old.

In the Bulls’ dramatic 3-2 District 5A-7 semifinal win Jan. 30 against second-seeded Plant, Wilson got caught up in the celebration after Justin Amis scored the winning goal with roughly 30 seconds remaining. 

“I think I hurt my ribs,” he said, laughing. “I’m getting old.”

The next night, the Bulls gave Wilson his first district title since 2015 with a 1-0 overtime win over No. 1-seed Steinbrenner. The Bulls eventually bowed out of the state playoffs this season in the second round.

Off The Field Success, Too

Success for Wilson isn’t just what happens on the field — it comes in the legacy of a program, its growth, its traditions. The biggest point of pride, according to Wilson, is seeing those early players return to give back to their former programs, while his current players buy into the athletic culture they are helping to shape. 

“The continuity of our program and the consistency started with the first group, that group being around for four years, set the bar,”  Wilson says. “They started coming back after they graduated for summer stuff and supported the guys they left behind.”

“That’s so important having those players come back and let the younger guys know what this time here meant to them. Letting them know that the memories they had of high school (athletics) was the most fun they had and that’s trickled down. Every group after them has tried to raise the bar another level.” 

(l.-r.) Devi Ndrita, Jori Ndrita, Malcom Lewis, Maurice Lewis, Camilo Torres and JP Torres pose with the District Championship trophy the Bulls won on Jan. 31. It was the school’s first district title since 2015, a team Devi, Maurice and JP all played on. (Photo courtesy of The Wiregrass Ranch Stampede school newspaper.)

Chris Madden, a member of Wilson’s first soccer team at WRH in 2006 and the current Competition & Development Director for the United Soccer League, remembers the first year of soccer at the school, playing without a senior class, and the struggles that squad had to overcome. Even then, Madden noted,  the players knew Wilson was preparing them for successes ahead. 

“We had a rough go that first year, but Coach Wilson, in all the years I played for him, always instilled a desire to be our best,” Madden says. “I think that is rare these days. I think he really understood the desires of young players and how to make them want to play and become better players.”

Four years later, the Bulls soccer team won 18 games, finished as the District runner-up and made the program’s first state series appearance. 

For Madden, it was Wilson’s dedication to the kind of people his players would become, that shines over their successes on the field or courts. That, he says, is what has brought him back to his alma mater for the last 10 years to help out as an assistant coach for the Bulls. 

“Getting to coach with him for about the last 10 years has been really important to me, because if I were to give credit to someone for helping me in my career in soccer today, I’d credit Coach Wilson, for sure,” Madden says. “You can tell he cares about you off the field, and when you are looking for someone to be that mentor, that’s very important. He made us want to play for him.”

Wilson’s third “coaching” job at Wiregrass Ranch comes as the school’s athletic director, and he approaches that position the same way he does his role as leader to his student-athletes. 

“My belief, and what I preach to all of our other coaches here at Wiregrass Ranch, is that the experience has to outweigh the outcome,” Wilson says. “You can win a state title, but if you are being screamed at and made miserable the whole time, then it’s really not worth doing. We really focus on things so when these kids look back on their high school athletics in 10 years, this really was the best time of their lives.”

Wesley Chapel District Park Rec Center Survives Delay Request

A mock-up of a proposed indoor athletic facility for Wesley Chapel District Park from 2004.

Plans to build a $3-million indoor athletic facility at the Wesley Chapel District Park (WCDP) are moving forward, following some heated debate at the Jan. 22 Pasco Board of County Commissioners (BOC) meeting about whether or not the commissioners should delay it.

At the BOC meeting, where commissioners were expected to approve the choice of the construction company tabbed by county staff to build the facility, District 4 commissioner Mike Wells seemed put off by the lack of notes by evaluation committee members in the committee’s final recommendation of Wannemacher Jensen Architects.

Comm. Wells said he wanted to see the notes the staffers took to make their final decision, which was unanimous. And, because those notes weren’t available, he suggested, “that all of the proposals be rejected and that the project be re-solicited.”

Requiring that every company that submitted bids and presentations do so again would delay the project by as much as six months.

The Consent Agenda is usually a list of items that the county staff has recommended for BOC approval. Sometimes, but rarely, items are pulled from the Agenda to correct a mistake, or to be debated. Wells pulled the Wesley Chapel facility item from the Consent Agenda, something he said he has done only one other time in his career as a commissioner.

“It’d be nice to be able to go back and look at the notes,” Wells said.

County purchasing director Stacy Ziegler told the BOC that proper procedure was followed during the selection process, and that tapes of those meetings are public.

“We followed a process that we have been following for the last six months, since we updated our purchasing manual,” Ziegler said. “We feel we’ve done our due diligence and our recommendation should stand.”

Wells, as well as District 5 Commissioner Jack Mariano — who originally seconded Wells’ motion to reject the selection — seemed miffed that Spring Engineering, Inc., wasn’t chosen.

Spring Engineering and its CEO, Richard Bekesh, each donated $1,000 to Wells’ reelection campaign in 2017.

Located in Holiday, FL, Spring Engineering was ranked as the seventh choice out of nine by the county’s evaluation committee, which was made up of assistant county administrator Erik Breitenbach, director of facilities management Andrew Baxter, chief project manager of the facilities management department TJ Pyche, director of parks, recreation & natural resources Keith Wiley and Brian Taylor, the manager of parks, recreation and natural resources.

Comm. Mariano said the county should be pushing local companies, and he had a problem with Spring Engineering, a local company, not making the top two, even though he did not attend any of the evaluation meetings. In fact, he and Wells both hinted at including county commissioners on the evaluation committees in the future, and later Mariano even suggested the companies should re-present to the commission.

Mike Moore, the commissioner for District 2, which includes most of Wesley Chapel, was visibly frustrated by Wells’ maneuverings, and argued that redoing the entire process would be a waste of time, and unfair to the companies bidding — as well as to the Wesley Chapel residents awaiting the new facility.

“If you go through the whole process and they write comments down and the results are exactly the same, then what?,” Moore asked.

Moore has been a proponent of building the indoor facility at WCDP, where the Wesley Chapel Athletic Association runs youth leagues in a variety of sports. The WCAA’s basketball leagues are currently held on outdoor courts, a less-than-ideal setting considering Florida’s hot and often rainy climate. 

An indoor gymnasium would allow the basketball leagues to be played indoors. It also would create an opportunity for gymnastics and volleyball leagues to be played, as well as adult recreation sports like pickleball.

The 13,000-sq.-ft. recreation center would also have meeting rooms and offer local residents a place to gather for meetings, exercise classes and parties.

Moore said he thinks more than 1,000 local athletes and residents will be impacted by the facility.

“There are a lot of people waiting for this to be done,” Moore told his fellow commissioners. “They need this to happen on the timeline we said it was going to happen.”

The idea for an indoor facility at the WCDP, which is currently just a collection of lacrosse, soccer, baseball and softball fields, with outdoor basketball courts and three tennis courts, has been bandied about since 2005, but the money hasn’t been available to build it.

The county has allocated $2.5-million towards the project, which comes from developer impact fees, Moore said, and could be completed by summer 2020.

Last October, the county officially solicited bids for the project, reaching out to 551 vendors via email, including 34 from Pasco County. Nine responses were received, and Spring Engineering was the lone bidder from the county.

On Nov. 29, the evaluation committee independently scored the proposals, settling on a final four of two firms from St. Petersburg and two from Tampa. On Jan. 3, the remaining firms gave presentations to the committee, and all five members ranked Wannemacher Jensen Architects, Inc., of St. Petersburg, No. 1.

Harvard Jolly, Inc., also based in St. Petersburg, was named No. 2 by four of the five committee members.

Wells seemed perturbed that there was a wide difference in rating points between some of the firms during the process, seeming to suggest that those results somehow made the process flawed. Mariano hinted at some sort of bias. Spring Engineering, for example, was scored an 82 by one committee member, but only 46 by two others. 

 “This is about picking the most qualified person, and I don’t think we did that,” Wells said.

Following the debate, Wells again motioned for the recommendation to be rejected, but Mariano declined to second it and it passed 4-1.

Cypress Creek Girls Soccer Ends Second Season With First Trophy

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Congratulations to the Cypress Creek Middle/High girls soccer team, which won the Sunshine Athletic Conference East Championship.

The Cypress Creek girls soccer team played its inaugural season last year, and like you might imagine any first-year program with a first-time coach working with a roster of freshmen and sophomores would, struggled and won only three matches.

While that first season may have created modest expectations for this year, the Coyotes blew those to smithereens this past season, which they put a stamp on with a regular-season ending win over a 16-4 Wiregrass Ranch squad.

That win gave the Coyotes the county’s Sunshine Athletic Conference East championship. It is the first title, and sports trophy, for the second-year school.

“We just kept winning and the stakes kept getting higher,” says Coyotes coach Jennifer Richardson. “We were hoping to have something to put in the trophy case.”

Right now, the trophy case at Cypress Creek has a picture of the team and a ball in it. Thanks to goals from juniors Abby Murphy and Sophia Mitchell, who combined on a corner kick with two minutes left to beat the Bulls 2-1, that is about to change.

“Becoming conference champions wasn’t an expectation for us in the beginning of the season,” said Mitchell, who scored nine goals this season. “I honestly would have been happy with just a winning record. We started out our season with an 8-1 win over Gulf, and both Emily Dominguez and I had hat tricks in the game. There couldn’t have been a better season opener. After that, we just kept on winning.”

Sophia Mitchell battles for a loose ball during a game this season.

The Cypress Creek girls were 7-0 in conference games — including a 3-2 win over Wesley Chapel and the 2-1 title clincher over Wiregrass Ranch — and 13-4 overall.

It was a 3-2 win in December, over county powerhouse Land O’Lakes, which had advanced to the state final four the previous three seasons, that convinced the young Coyotes something special might be in store for this season.

“That was a tough, physical game,” Richardson said. “After that, we realized that we could really accomplish something this season.”

While expectations were low to start the season, they grew quickly, as the wins piled up and Regan Bourne (team-high 13 goals), Mitchell (9) and Dominguez (9) began to rack up goals. 

The team’s success in Pasco County, however, couldn’t be duplicated elsewhere, due to the misfortune of being placed in a brutal district, Class 2A District 9, with the likes of Berkeley Prep, Academy of the Holy Names and Clearwater Central Catholic. The Coyotes lost to all three during the season by a combined 15-1 score, but took Berkeley Prep the distance in the district playoffs, falling 1-0. 

Of the 17 players on the varsity roster, only three are seniors and only senior Katelyn Leavines was a starter. The Coyotes are hoping to jump out of 2A-9 and into 3A-7 with Wesley Chapel and Pasco, or even 3A-8 with Land O’Lakes and Sunlake. 

“I’m hoping they re-do the numbers and move us out of the classification,” Richardson said. “We’re sitting at around 1,100 students now for high school, and we’d like a chance to be more competitive in 3A.”

An FHSAA meeting in March will determine re-alignments for winter sports teams. Currently, the parameters for student population in 2A are 432-1,199 students. Class 3A’s range is 1,200-1,720. 

“I can’t wait to see what next season will look like,” Bourne said.

Freedom knocks off Wharton 51-49

TAMPA – Unlike early-December’s lopsided, 19-point Wharton victory, Friday night’s boys basketball matchup between Freedom and the Wildcats was a back-and-forth affair, fitting of the neighborhood rivalry atmosphere on display in the Patriots’ gym. 

Everything that went wrong in the first meeting for Freedom — an early deficit that steadily grew, slip-ups on defense and poor decision making — has disappeared since the Dec. 4 meeting. The Patriots responded with an eight-game win streak leading to the rematch, including a tournament victory in the Calvary Christian Shootout over the holiday break. 

Friday, they made it nine-straight. After four fourth quarter lead changes, Patriot senior Xavier Betancourt stepped back from a pair of defenders to create space and drained a three-pointer with less than 10 seconds remaining to give the Patriots a 51-49 victory.

The win pulled Freedom into a first-place tie with Wharton in Class 8, District.

“The first time when we lost (to Wharton) we didn’t really play like ourselves,” Betancourt said. “We came in nervous because of how packed and loud their gym was; this time we were prepared and hungry inside, wanting to let everything out.” 

Freedom (12-1, 8-1 in 8A-8) drew the game to a late tie at 46-all as Kevin Rodriguez (game-high 17 points) drained a three-pointer.

Jasper Floyd shoots over a Freedom defender.

Then with under a minute to play, the last swing of momentum to go Wharton’s way came via an impressive Carr Thiam (nine points) rejection of a Freedom layup attempt under the basket, and a breakaway basket-and-1 from Salim Richardson.

However, Freedom and a boisterous home-court fanbase was not to be denied as Trevian Hinson converted a late foul into two free throws to pull Freedom within 49-48, and Betancourt finished the lead changes with his game-winning three-pointer. 

“We used that loss to Wharton as motivation since that game, just like we’ve been motivated by the good things that have happened since,” Freedom coach Ken Angel said. “Anytime we play Wharton, it’s an emotion-filled game. These guys are neighborhood buddies, they see each other all the time, and everyone wants to win this game when we play.” 

Wharton (11-3, 8-1) got a team-high 14 points from Darin Green, and Jasper Floyd had 11 points in the loss.

For more on the game, make sure you check out our story in the Jan. 25 edition of the Neighborhood News.