The Wiregrass Ranch High boys soccer team, a state semifinalist in 2015, is poised to have its best season yet. (Photo: Andy Warrener)
Below are five teams we’re watching closely this winter high school sports season:
1:Wiregrass Ranch High (WRH) Boys Soccer — Head coach David Wilson says that the 2017-18 team could potentially be the best he’s ever had. That’s saying a lot from a coach who brought his team to the state semifinals in 2015 and hasn’t lost a game against a Pasco County team in four years.
“When you have a strong and talented group of seniors that have played together for three years on varsity, there’s potential for great things,” Wilson said.
A trio of senior veterans coming off All-State seasons form the down-the-middle strength for the Bulls. Center back Jackson Trudel controls the game from the back line. Center-mid Royce Luedde is 6-foot-4 and controls the air, the middle of the field and is great on set pieces. Midfielder Ian Flores is one of the most highly-recruited players Wilson’s ever had, with 60 colleges having contacted him, including Rutgers Univ. in New Brunswick, NJ, which has offered him a scholarship.
The youngsters aren’t bad either – freshman Justin Amis and junior Rafael Silva scored three goals apiece in a 13-0 preseason win over Hernando, with sophomores Noah Leonard and Jake Bierhorst pitching in two goals each.
2:WRH Boys Basketball — The Bulls have had the unenviable situation to be mired in Class 8A, District 8, which is brutally tough, with the likes of perennial New Tampa powerhouses Freedom and Wharton, as well as defending state champion Sickles. If the Bulls continue to build on their 2016-17 arc, they might be ready to pull even with that triumvirate of top-tier teams.
“Eight seniors return for this year’s team,” says Bulls head coach Jeremy Calzone. “So, if there’s a year to do it, it’s this one. It’s the most experience we’ve ever had to start a season.”
Senior forwards Jayden Wilson (6’-9”) and Justin Rush (6’-6”) give the Bulls great size. Junior guard Elijah Howell is the team’s best shooter and leader on the floor. Senior guards Val Garcia and Jordan Miner also are veterans who have been on varsity since their freshman years.
3:Cypress Creek Middle High (CCH) Girls Weightlifting — New program starts from scratch, right? Not so much. Four-year Wesley Chapel High (WCH) girls weightlifting coach Tico Hernandez has 24 girls on the team to start the season.
Like their coach, sophomores Addison Metcalf and Megan Faysash, who is already emerging as the team leader, come over from WCH. Junior Neely Peterson didn’t lift in 2016-17, but is a fierce competitor, according to Hernandez. Freshman Emily Speck is the team’s spark plug and is working to perfect her skills and technique.
4:Wesley Chapel High (WCH) Girls Basketball — The team’s toughest opponent this year likely will be adversity.
Coming off their best record (15-9) since the 2009-10 season with everyone poised to return, the Wildcats lost their top returner to an ACL injury, and CCH’s opening just four miles away took some of WCH’s other key players.
“We lost 80 percent of our scoring from last year,” Livingston said. “We only return three kids total from last year’s varsity team.”
But the toughest adversity will come in the form of getting over the death of a family member. The Monday prior to tryouts, assistant coach Marcellus “Coach Shack” Shackelford was killed in a car accident.
Shackelford was the only assistant four-year head coach Peter Livingston ever had.
“There’s a lot of adversity we’re trying to overcome this year,” Livingston said. “We also want to celebrate him (Coach Shackelford) and try to get ready for the season.”
5:WCH Boys Basketball — Last season was a down year for the typically steady Wildcats boys basketball team. After a 21-8 season two years ago, WCH managed just a 9-17 record in 2016-17.
They should bounce back this season, as they get a shot in the arm from the school’s football team. Division I-A senior football recruits Chaz Neal (who is 6’-9”) and Isaiah Bolden will take to the hardwood for the ‘Cats in 2017-18.
Neal played in seven games for Armwood a year ago, averaging three rebounds.
U.S. women’s national ice hockey team defender Monique Lamoureux-Morando looks for a teammate during an exhibition win over the University of Tampa’s men’s team last month.
The U.S. women’s hockey team has a busy winter schedule planned as it trains in Wesley Chapel, and much of the activity will take place right off I-75 at Florida Hospital Center Ice, including the Four Nations Cup, which drops the puck tonight.
Canada plays Sweden this afternoon at 3:30 p.m. at FHCI to get the action started, and the U.S. takes on Finland at 7 p.m.
Formerly known as the Three Nations Cup before Sweden joined the United States, Canada and Finland in 2000, the tournament has featured the top national teams in women’s hockey since 1996. Although Canada won 11 of the first 15 Three/Four Nations cups, the U.S. has won four of the last six, including the last two.
Also at FHCI this week, the U.S. plays Canada on Wednesday, November 8 (the game is sold out) and Sweden on Friday, November 10.
On Sunday, November 12, the first- and third-place games will be held at Amalie Arena in downtown Tampa at noon and 3:30 p.m.
The match against Canada, winner of the women’s hockey gold medals at the last four Olympics, will pit the two top teams in the world. The U.S. has split games with Canada, winning 5-2 on Oct. 22 in Quebec City, and losing 5-1 in Boston on Oct. 25.
Although all eyes are on the Four Nations Cup, what is really driving the U.S. women is erasing the memory of the 2014 Sochi Olympics, where they lost a 2-0 lead in the final four minutes to Canada in the gold medal game before falling 3-2.
The U.S. women have reasserted themselves as arguably the best team in the world, winning every world title since then, and seven of the last eight.
“The way we see it, pressure is a privilege,’’ says forward Meghan Duggan, a former University of Wisconsin Badger who won the Patty Kazmaier Memorial Award, given to college hockey’s best female player, in 2011. “We are coming off three world championships, so we’re feeling pretty confident. I’m proud of this team, and we’re looking forward to showing the world what we have in this next tournament.”
That talent will be on display all winter long at FHCI, as the team continues to train at the not-even-one-year-old facility in preparation for the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
So far, the members of the team are happy to have landed in Wesley Chapel.
“Honestly, it’s been fantastic,’’ said Duggan. “I think Wesley Chapel and a lot of the different pieces of the puzzle coming together for us is a big reason why we’re down here.”
Those puzzle pieces include an area that is ripe with off-the-ice activities that have included lots of golf, shopping and hanging out at the pool (and outstanding accommodations) at Saddlebrook Resort, plus a new hockey facility that Duggan says is state of the art.
The experiences in Wesley Chapel haven’t been limited to hockey and hanging out, either. The U.S. team, like the rest of us in the area, got to experience its first hurricane when Irma swept through town last month. Bad weather is nothing new for players from the snowy and cold north, but a hurricane was altogether different, as Irma’s approach made for some nervous hockey players.
“I’ve never been through anything like that, where trying to get water and stuff was difficult,’’ said Jocelyne Lamoureux. “That raised the anxiety a little.”
The team spent less than 24 hours in a shelter at Saddlebrook, which was only subjected to windy conditions that reminded Lamoureux of the straight-line wind storms she’s experienced in her home state of North Dakota.
Hurricanes aside, Duggan says Wesley Chapel has been an ideal spot for the team.
“We scoped (the area) out in April and May with wide eyes and excitement,’’ she said. “It’s going to be hard to leave after the Olympics to go back to our colder climates.”
Wharton runner Nehemiah “Tre” Rivers has run out from the shadow of his older sister Bryanna and towards the boys cross country and track record books for Wharton High. (Photo: Andy Warrener)
Like any good cross country runner, Wharton High junior Nehemiah “Tre” Rivers is always chasing something.
For most of his life, it was older sister and former star Wharton runner Bryanna. Then, it was his first meet title, along with all the others that followed.
Now, he has his sights set on the Wharton school record for the 3.1-mile distance.
Nehemiah and his Wildcats teammates head into the Class 4A state meet Saturday in Tallahassee — for the first time since 2008 both the boys and girls will be competing — looking for a strong finish, and maybe make a little a history in the process.
Nehemiah is certainly primed and ready. At the Class 4A, District 6 meet at Al Lopez Park in Tampa on Oct. 25, he won his second straight individual district title in 16 minutes, 12 seconds. Just the week before, on the same course, at the Hillsborough County Championships meet, he had taken second in 16:10.40, a new personal best.
At the regional meet in Lakeland where the Wharton teams qualified for state, Rivers was fourth overall but his time was only 16:35. The Wharton boys school record is 15:55, set by Ryan Courtoy in 2006 at the Foot Locker South Regional, and Nehemiah has beating that mark as one of his current goals.
Can he get it? His coach think so.
At the county meet, Nehemiah paced off of Citrus Park Christian’s Trevor Foley, who has the second best cross country time in the state this season (15:20). At county, Foley ran a 16:05.60 and pulled Nehemiah along to that 16:10 personal best.
“Tre was going to keep it close with Foley,” Wharton boys track and cross country coach Kyle LoJacono says. “I feel like if Foley ran a 15:50, Tre would have ran a 15:55.”
LoJacono plans to enter Nehemiah in this year’s Footlocker South Regional on Nov. 25 in Charlotte, NC, and if the school record survives Regionals and States, it’s there that the record could very well fall.
LoJacono says he has Nehemiah on an overload cycle, a training method that stacks on miles over the course of about a month. Runners tend to be a little sluggish during overload period, but when they get off of it, it’s a lot like taking the weighted donut off a baseball bat.
Nehemiah was in Day 23 when he repeated as District champ on October 25. Both LoJacono and Rivers are hoping that the peak is right around the corner.
All In The Family
Rivers ran in the long shadow cast by his older sister Bryanna his first two years of high school cross country and track.
Now a collegiate runner at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, Bryanna was one of the most accomplished Wharton runners ever. She set the school record in the 800 meters,and amassed 11 state medals in her four years at Wharton, the most for any track athlete, boy or girl, in the school’s 20-year history.
She’s only the second girl in Wharton track and field history to sign a full-ride college scholarship.
They say you run faster when you have someone to chase, and Tre grew up chasing Bryanna. She always had the edge, but he was getting close to his sister by 11 years old, until a problem with a growth plate in his foot de-railed the effort.
At 13, Nehemiah finally caught up to his big sister, beating her in an 800-meter race. He hasn’t looked back since.
“I see us as equals now,” Nehemiah says. “We both push ourselves to get stronger and rise up to the next challenge.”
Rivers is seizing the opportunity to shine.
“We knew coming in what he could be,” LoJacono says. “He missed time with the foot injury, but we knew it would only be a matter of time before he came along.”
Tre’s ascent has been strong and steady.
He actually won his first high school meet, the Central Hillsborough Invitational, in 2015, but failed to advance past the district meet.
However, his improvement from year to year has been staggering. He slashed three minutes off that first victory by the end of his freshman season, qualified for the state meet as a sophomore with a time 16:49, and then ran a personal best of 16:16 at States.
“When he came out to run his freshman year, it was a fight just to get through Districts, and he didn’t make it,” LoJacono says. “He remembered that the whole year, and it motivated him to have a great sophomore year. Now, he’s established himself as the top runner in the district.”
It has been tough sledding at times for the Wesley Chapel High football team this season.
It would be an understatement to say that the Wesley Chapel High (WCH) football team has hit some potholes in the road.
The Wildcats lost their home opener to cross-town rival Wiregrass Ranch High (WRH) by a touchdown. WCH lost its starting quarterback and top college prospect, Isaiah Bolden, to a shoulder injury in that game, and he was later dismissed from the team.
The ‘Cats suffered a demoralizing Class 5A, District 8 defeat at Anclote 27-10, as Florida State University recruit Chaz Neal was ejected and suspended for the next game against Ridgewood.
And, a rash of injuries has sapped the Wildcat roster down to the low 30s, even the high 20s on some days.
The Wildcats, however, remain in the playoff hunt, and they actually control their own destiny. At 4-1 in Dist. 5A-8 (and 6-2 overall), WCH has two crucial distrct games remaining — Oct. 20 at home against first-place Zephyrhills (5-0), and next week’s home finale against River Ridge, currently tied with Wesley Chapel for second with a 4-1 record.
Senior running backs Dexter Leverett and Malik Melvin are still a potent one-two punch. Leverett is closing in on another 1,000-yard season after running for 179 and two TDs in a 33-6 win over Ridgewood.
Senior linebacker Austen Wittish leads the county in tackles with 104 (and five sacks), and senior wideout-turned-quarterback Justin Trapnell has solidified the QB position since the loss of Bolden.
Along with the aforementioned standouts, sophomore receiver Jelani Vassell, junior tight end Tyler Wittish, junior lineman Seth Petty, and senior linemen Andrew Brooks and Matt Severson form a group that the team is rallying around.
“It’s a special group of guys that stick together and have true grit,” Wildcats head coach Tony Egan says. “There’s not one of them that takes a play off and I anticipate them all playing at the next level somewhere.”
“It’s been more responsibility these last couple of weeks but we tell each other to work hard and stay together,” Austen Wittish said. “We have to play together as a family.”
Bulls Also In The Hunt
After a season of narrow escapes, WRH finally lost its first game of the season Oct. 6 to Gaither by a 23-12 score, but bounced back with a 39-8 win over New Tampa’s Freedom and is currently 6-1.
The Bulls had opened their season with five straight wins, but only a 20-0 victory over New Tampa’s Wharton High was comfortable. The other four victories were by a combined total of 21 points. But the Bulls are in good shape for a second straight playoff berth, with tonight’s game against winless Leto, an Oct. 27 home game against Plant and Nov. 3’s season finale against Auburndale.
Cypress Creek Middle High (CCH), which won the first game it ever played 12-0 over Gulf, has found matching their hot start difficult.
The Coyotes, who play their last home game Oct. 27 against Mulberry, had been outscored 273-0 the past five games heading into tonight’s game at Springstead.
VolleyBulls Break Through
The WRH volleyball team had a breakout season.
Wiregrass Ranch volleyball players (l.-r.) Jaizah Anderson, Carolina Eichelberger and Destanie Aydt led their team to an SAC title. (Photo: Andy Warrener)
Brimming with offensive firepower, the Bulls finished 20-6 – the second-best regular season record in school history — before losing a close 25-23, 26-24, 25-16 match to Wharton in the Class Class 8A, District 8 semifinals.
The Bulls’ offense carried them through a tough schedule and to a Sunshine Athletic Conference (SAC) championship, which they won 3-2 over Land O’ Lakes on October 10.
Three Wiregrass outside hitters are in triple-digit kills for the season. Juniors Jaizah Anderson and Destanie Aydt led the team heading into the postseason with 159 and 135 kills, respectively, while senior Caroline Eichelberger rang up 113 kills during the regular season.
“I’d like to say I developed them (the trio), but they came that way,” Wiregrass head coach Michelle Davis said. “We have a great feeder program in John Long Middle School and all three of those girls play on high-level club teams. It’s amazing talent coming in, I just have to fine tune it.”
The three didn’t even come all the way together until this year. Aydt and Eichelberger played together in 2016; Anderson transferred in from Fivay High in Hudson.
Now, the trio is a force to be reckoned with. Davis doesn’t even need to have all three on the floor at the same time, even though Eichelberger can play middle hitter with Aydt and Anderson on the outside. Davis often opts to rest one of her hitters to keep them fresh, in case a team like Land O’ Lakes (15-8) takes them the distance.
“It’s encouraging, we have not had this kind of power for years,” Eichelberger says
“It’s always good to have someone on the team who can back you up, even if you get into slumps,” Aydt says.
Lankton Making Waves
WRH’s boys’ swim team also is showing some promise.
SAC champ Doug Lankton
The Bulls are coming off of a fourth-place finish at the SAC meet, but even more promising is the rise of sophomore all-distance freestyler Doug Lankton.
Lankton won the 200-yard freestyle at conference and placed second in the 500 free. Lankton also led off the 4×100 freestyle relay for the Bulls that wound up taking second at the conference meet..
Lankton, even as a sophomore, brings experience to the Bulls as a veteran of the Pipeline swimming club under coach Rene Piper. He is sure to be a factor in his strongest events, the 200 and 500 freestyles, when the Bulls take to the water for districts on Wednesday, October 25, at the Bobby Hicks Pool in Tampa.
“We think he has chances in both events ,” Wiregrass boys coach Kyle Gramm says. “He’s just now coming up to his peak and cut five seconds from his 500-yard time at conference. It’s going to be exciting to see what he does at districts.”
Season Of Firsts For CCH
In its very first year of existence, everything accomplished at the new Cypress Creek Middle High School is a new school record.
CCH golf standout Jarrod Smith.
Sophomore boys golfer Jarrod Smith is helping to establish some of those records. Smith, who played for WCH as a freshman, is coming off a third-place finish at the SAC tourney held at Northdale Country Club.
Smith shot a two-over 74 and made First Team All-SAC. He is no stranger to the sport, having picked it up six years ago and making Second-Team All-SAC as a freshman at WCH. He is and will be the guy to watch at Cypress Creek.
“He is definitely our bright spot,” Cypress Creek boys coach Anthony Mitchell said. “It’s super exciting. Obviously, by this time next year and beyond, he’s going to be one of the favorites to win conference.”
Smith’s strong suit is his putting game. He hit a 30-foot putt for birdie on the 10th hole at the SAC championships to help secure his third-place finish. He led the Coyotes into the Class A, District 13 championships at the Eagles Club Golf Club in Odessa last weekend.
“I just try to go out and play the best round I can every day,” Smith said.
The Cypress Creek Middle High cross country teams enter their first postseason this week. (Photo: Gigante Productions)
CCH Cross Country Team Making Strides
In its very first year of existence, Meanwhile, the CCH cross country team, while tiny in its first year, has the benefit of veteran coaches coming over from WCH, where boys coach John Hoffman and girls coach Eliza Passardi coached together for three years.
“New facilities, new rubber track and it was exciting to be a part of a brand new program,” Passardi says.
The coaches didn’t even discuss coming over to CCH together, it just happened.
“I knew I was coming over but we didn’t talk about it,” Passardi said. “We had a great team at Chapel where, between the two of us, we went to states two of the last three years.”
The Coyotes, who are competing in Class 2A, District 7 meet in Weeki Wachee on Thursday, October 26, only have 11 cross country runners, with seven of them boys. But, Hoffman thinks he has a couple of runners who could advance to Regionals in sophomore Joe Vreeland and freshman John Rowsell.
There will certainly be a lot more attention drawn to the program as spring track season rolls around. Hoffman, already pegged for the head track coach position, will have the only eight-lane rubber track in Pasco County. CCH is already confirmed to host the conference track meet and Hoffman is trying to work out hosting a large invitational for the spring as well.
“Everything’s new here at the school, it’s a lot to put together,” Hoffman said. “We even already have the hurdles for the track, packed in boxes, unassembled.”
After seven seasons of lopsided losses to their neighborhood rivals just up Bruce B. Downs (BBD) Blvd., Freedom High’s football team finally has New Tampa bragging rights.
The Patriots used a 99-yard drive in the final minutes, capped by junior Dominick Vazquez’s first rushing touchdown of the season with 1:42 remaining, to knock off New Tampa rival Wharton 12-7 on Sept. 28 in a Class 7A, District 8 clash.
The Patriots’ win was their first of the season, and first over Wharton (now 2-4, 0-3 in 7A-8) since a 16-7 victory in 2009 under coach James Harrell.
When he was told his team had ended a losing streak that long, said Freedom head coach Floyd Graham, who is in his second season, said, “It just blew my mind. I know it’s a huge rivalry with the schools just three miles apart, and a lot of the guys on both teams went to middle school together, so it was a big deal to win this.”
The Patriots (2-4, 1-1) have had problems all season long finishing games, hampered by having to play so many players both ways due to a small roster of roughly 30 players. For the fourth time this season, the Patriots failed to score in the first half, but for the first time, they found a way to score critical second half points and offset a 42-yard touchdown run by Wharton’s D.J. Green that had given the Wildcats a 7-0 lead.
And, they did it with a backup quarterback seeing his first action of the season. With senior signal caller Sebastian Cuevas injured near the end of the first half, junior Jayland Desue, the team’s leading receiver, entered the game under center and led the Patriots to a pair of scoring drives.
The first was topped off by a 10-yard touchdown run by Stanley Elisme, cutting the Wildcats’ lead to 7-6. The second was one Graham may never forget, both for the way it started and the way it ended.
Three plays after taking over on their own 1 yard line with about six minutes remaining, Freedom faced a 4th-and-2 from the 9. Never in 27 years had Graham gone for a fourth down inside his own 10-yard-line. He looked over at defensive coordinator Henry Scurrey, who said “We have to go for it. What do we have to lose?”
So, Graham and the Patriots went for it. As Wharton scrambled out of punt return formation, junior Jeremiah Ashe (left) dashed eight yards on a jet sweep to keep the drive alive.
“I just knew I had to do anything I could for my teammates to help get this win,’’ said Ashe. “I was a little nervous, but I did what I had to do.”
The unlikely conversion created a spark on the Freedom sideline. A few Wharton penalties moved the Patriots along, and Vazquez scored with 102 seconds left to give Freedom its first lead of the season.
Wharton’s last gasp attempt at a comeback ended on an interception by Ashe, who now has had an interception in every game this season.
“It’s one of the best feelings,’’ said Graham. “I can’t stress to you how hard they have played for three weeks and come away with nothing…. They have given everything they had, come into the lockerroom afterwards with blood on their knuckles and so dehydrated. We’ve been so banged up. That makes this extremely special.”
(l.-r.) Freedom swimmers Hannah Labohn, Genevieve Clark, McKaley Goldblum & Abigail Leisure are headed to the county swim championships.
SWIMMING: The future is bright for the Freedom High girls swimming team, which placed third at the Western Conference swim championships in Brandon on Sept 27.
The quartet of sophomore McKaley Goldblum, sophomore Abigail Leisure, freshman Hannah Labohn and senior Genevieve Clark (photo, above right) advanced to the Oct. 6 county championships at Bobby Hicks Pool by finishing in the top two in two medley relays and five individual events.
The foursome finished second in the 200-yard medley relay, and first in the 400 freestyle relay.
Goldblum finished first in two events – the 100 and 200 freestyles – while Leisure and Labohn captured gold in the 200 individual medley and 100 breaststroke, respectively.
Clark advanced to the county championships after a second-place finish in the 50 free.
The Freedom boys advancing to individual events at the county meet were freshman Zach Kopel (first in the 200 free, second in the 500 free) and junior Christian Morera (second in the 100 backstroke). Kopel, Morera, senior Cobyn Panarelli and freshman Glynn Morgan took second in the 200 medley relay.
Wharton sophomore Charles Fields is headed to the county championships after a second-place finish in the 50 free, and first-place in the 100 free. He will be joined by sophomore Derek McDonald, junior Jeff Korver and senior Joseph Malone, who swam with Fields on the winning 200 freestyle team.
Senior Raweerat Khunduang led the Wharton girls with a win in the 50 free and a second in the 100 free, while teaming up with junior Juliana Silva and seniors Kyra Okin and Valeria Ramos to take second in the 200 free relay.
