Wildcat Baseball Bidding For State Final Four

Senior SS Drew Ehrhard leads the Wildcats in almost every offensive category this season.

By the looks of things midway through the 2017 season, the Wharton High baseball team was nothing special.

It was, however, nothing that a few lineup tweaks and a bolt of confidence couldn’t fix.

After back-to-back losses to Freedom and Newsome dropped the Wildcats’ record to 8-8 on April 6, the team has been, well, perfect.

“We saw everything was kind of going downhill,’’ said senior shortstop Drew Ehrhard. “We kind of looked at each other at one practice, and just decided it was time to pick things back up.”

The Wildcats have now won 10 straight games, including a second straight Class 8A, District 4 title and regional playoff wins over Ocoee and Ocala Forest.

Tonight, the Wildcats travel to Tallahassee to take on Lincoln High in the regional final, with the winner advancing to the state final four starting June 2.

Lincoln, ranked No. 6 in the state by MaxPreps, has won 16 straight games, but face a Wharton team that seems to be peaking.

The recipe for the Wildcats’ success has been right out of the baseball handbook: great pitching, solid defense and clutch hitting.

Aaron Cohn

In the 7-6 extra-inning win over Ocoee in the Region 8A-1 quarterfinal, the Wildcats got a tremendous relief outing from senior Aaron Cohn (6 innings, 2 hits, 1 run and a season-best 7 strikeouts), two hits from Ehrhard, two RBI from senior catcher Zach Sirois and a walk-off sacrifice fly from Brian Baughman to win the game in the eighth inning.

“And, that was not a routine fly ball,’’ said coach Scott Hoffman. “That was a missile.”

The Wildcats improved to 18-8 with the win over Ocala Forest a week later, as junior leftfielder Ricky Viloria singled in Duncan Pastore in the bottom of the seventh in a 6-5 win.

Wharton has outscored opponents 78-17, and 11 of those runs surrendered coming in the last two games.

“We always thought that If we get hot, we feel good about our chances,’’ Hoffman says.

Not too many of the ‘Cats have been hotter than Ehrhard, who will play next season for the Division II powerhouse University of Tampa Spartans.

Wharton’s on-field leader is hitting .438 with nine doubles, four homers and 24 RBI, all team and career highs.

He has played every inning of every game for four years, and this season, he has hit safely in 22 of the team’s 26 games.

“Drew is the most unbelievable player we’ve had here,’’ said Hoffman, as he watched his star blast three batting practice pitches over the centerfield fence at a recent practice. “He’s a dream kid as an athlete, academically and with his character.”

He has not been alone in putting up big numbers for the Wildcats.

Pitchers Austin Appel, Pastore and Cohn also have played big roles in Wharton’s charge down the stretch. When the year began, pitching was one of the team’s biggest question marks.

However, Appel stepped up to be the team’s senior ace, and is 7-1 with a 1.81 ERA.

Pastore fit into the relief role successfully, with a 0.93 ERA, and in eight appearances, he has allowed hits in just two of them.

In arguably the team’s biggest regular season win of the season, Pastore struck out four in two innings to get the victory over highly-touted Plant, 2-1.

“I definitely think it was the Plant game that turned everything around,’’ Ehrhard says. “We played some competitive games before that, but the game against Plant was to see what we were really made of. After that, we knew that everyone who steps on the field in front of us, we have a chance to beat.”

Cohn, a Fairleigh Dickinson University (in Teaneck, NJ) signee, has turned in some fantastic late-season performances as well. In his six appearances (including three starts) during the winning streak, Cohn has gone a perfect 6-0, allowing just 13 hits and two earned runs in 27.2 innings (for a tidy 0.50 ERA) while striking out 28.

While the Wildcats thrived with great pitching and hitting from Ehrhard, junior Leo Alfonzo (.307) seniors Ricky Nieves (.328, 16 RBI) and Clayton Coringrato (.275, 17 RBI), Hoffman was expecting another player to surprisingly emerge in the late season run.

“One of you guys will be the difference maker,’’ he told them at a practice. “I don’t know who it is, but it will be one of you.”

It turned out to be Sirois. In the past six games, the team’s catcher is 12-for-24 (after going 11-for-61 the first 19 games) with seven RBI (compared to four the rest of the season).

“He’s emerging, he hasn’t done that all year,’’ Hoffman said. “He’s a different person.”

And against Ocala Forest, it was Viloria getting his first game-winning hit to lift the Wildcats, who now appear to be a different team, hoping to make it back to the State final four for the first time since 2012.

“This is a great group,’’ Hoffman says, touting the team’s work ethic and 3.4 cumulative grade-point-average, second in the county. “We get overlooked a lot. The newspapers like to talk about the same schools all the time. Find another school that has played for the district championship five of the last six years, and won it three times. There aren’t many. I think they think because we’re in New Tampa (we can’t play), but every time it’s tournament time, we’re there.”

U.S. Women’s Hockey Team To Call Wesley Chapel Home

After a week of practicing and living in Wesley Chapel, the U.S. Women’s National hockey team has decided to move in.

USA Hockey announced on May 5 that the team will call the new Florida Hospital Center Ice (FHCI) its home beginning in September, and leading right up to the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea.

The 2017-18 U.S. Women’s National Team will move its headquarters to Wesley Chapel as it prepares to win gold at the upcoming Winter Games Feb. 9-25.

“This is a big deal for us,’’ says Gordie Zimmermann, FHCI’s general manager. “This is giving us international exposure, and it’s a great thing for our community.”

Zimmermann says Tampa Bay Lightning chairman and governor Jeff Vinik was one of many to congratulate him on winning the bidding rights to be the home for the woman’s team.

“He called to say this was a great thing for us, them being here,’’ Zimmermann says.

Jay Feaster, the former general manager of the Tampa Bay Lightning and currently its executive director for community hockey development, says the upcoming U.S. team camp will be great for the area and even better for the growth of women’s hockey in Florida.

There is currently only one elite team for girls in the Tampa Bay area, which is based out of Lakeland.

“This is a tremendous opportunity for us in terms of trying to grow the women’s game at the youth level,’’ Feaster says. “The challenge is making young people aware of the game, and letting girls know that they can, in fact, play.”

Feaster said the Lightning will have a presence during U.S. training. The organization already has invested $6 million to grow the game through its “Build The Thunder” program, which visits hundreds of schools in the area and teaches students street hockey in order to introduce them to the game.

Now, Feaster says, that program will be able to incorporate successful, Olympic- and World Championship-winning women into the program to generate more interest among girls.

Feaster notes that the Lightning has been working on creating girls hockey leagues for aspiring players, and is hopeful of fielding an elite team to compete around the state later this summer.

“Our goal is to get it where you don’t have local, talented kids that feel like to get to a Division I scholarship or make it to the next level, they have to leave the state,’’ Feaster says. “To have this spotlight on us, it’s just a great opportunity for our female players.”

Feaster and Zimmermann both credit the efforts of Brett Strot in getting Team USA to make Wesley Chapel its home.

Strot is a longtime assistant coach with a number of the women’s national teams, and also is the head coach of the USPHL Tampa Bay Junior (Elite and Empire) hockey clubs that play out of FHCI.

Zimmermann says that a few other cities bid to host the women’s national team, but the combination of the weather, Saddlebrook Resort (where the players will stay) and FHCI’s multiple rinks and training facilities was too good for USA Hockey to pass up.

“It was just a really good fit,’’ Zimmermann says.

The announcement that the team would be based in Wesley Chapel came on the same day USA Hockey announced the 23 players named to the U.S. Women’s National  team in a ceremony at Amalie Arena, the downtown Tampa home of the Lightning, that was broadcast live on the NHL Network.

The selections came at the conclusion of a weeklong U.S. Women’s National Team Selection Camp that took place May 1-5 at FHCI, featuring 42 invited players and including a scrimmage that was open to the public.

Of the 23 players selected, 21 were on the team that recently defeated Canada to win the gold medal at the International Ice Hockey Federation Women’s World Championships.

Also, 12 members of the new national team also were on the 2014 U.S. Women’s Olympic team that won the silver medal, after losing to Canada 3-2 in overtime (the first time the gold medal was decided in OT in women’s Olympic hockey). Eleven states are represented on the new roster, led by Minnesota (6), Massachusetts (4) and Wisconsin (3).

There are no Florida players on the team this year, but Zimmermann and Feaster both say they hope that someday, that will change.

“This is truly a team of elite athletes and great role models,” Feaster says. “Best of all, they win, too. There are two programs that are the preeminent women’s teams in the world, and that’s the U.S. and Canada (which has won the last four gold medals). Chances are, you’ll see them playing each other next year for the gold medal, too.”

Look for more stories about the U.S. Women’s Hockey Team in future issues of this publication and on WCNT-tv.

Arbor Greene Girl To Chase Hockey Dream In Elite Program In Pittsburgh

Lilly has taken some hard hits while playing with the Jr. Bulls boys travel teams that are based at the Ice Sports Forum in Brandon.

Lilly Hartnell has been playing hockey for four years, and has evolved into one of the top players around while earning a reputation for her skills as a defender and proving she’s as hard-nosed as they come.

And yet, 14-year-old Lilly has never played a hockey game against girls.

That will change this summer, when Lilly reports to Pennsylvania to join the girls AAA team in the Pittsburgh Penguins Elite hockey program, one of the top youth hockey programs in the country.

“It’s going to be different,’’ she says.

Lilly, however, is ready.

Though she hasn’t been playing as long as many of her future teammates who start at much younger ages in the Midwest and Northeast, Lilly has been playing on the boys Jr. Bulls travel team out at the Ice Sports Forum in Brandon since she began.

One thing is for sure – she’s plenty tough enough. “When she was playing Pee Wee division (11-12 year olds), there was no hitting allowed,” said her mother, Valerie. “This one here, she’s so aggressive, she led the league in penalty minutes.”

She might just be the hardest-hitting freckle-faced, braces-wearing girl around. An Arbor Greene resident and eighth-grader at Terrace Community Middle School, Lilly’s story may be unique locally, but it’s not entirely uncommon. Because there is only one elite travel hockey team in the state — the Lady Vipers in Lakeland — there are few opportunities for girls players to hone their craft against other girls.

So, they do what Lilly does — play for boys travel teams, which is rare, or move north in search of better opportunities and competition.

Lilly has Division I-A college hockey aspirations, and knew she would eventually have to find a girls’ program to play for. Last summer, while competing at a Team USA developmental camp in Kent, OH, she made friends with a number of players who are in the Pittsburgh Penguins youth program. They encouraged her to apply for a tryout, and others suggested the St. Louis Blues and Dallas North Stars programs as well.

In April, Lilly got her tryout, along with 70 others. After the first two days, she anxiously checked her cell phone, hoping not to receive the dreaded “You did not make it” email.  After refreshing her screen, and those on her parents phone and laptop, “a few million times,” the email never came. Lilly had survived another cut from a field of 40, before playing herself into one of 16 spots on the team.

“It was nerve wracking,’’ she says. When she got the good news, her family celebrated in their hotel room with screams, hugs and tears.

That’s pretty heady stuff for a player with only four years of hockey experience, but succeeding on ice is in her blood.

Her father Sean and his twin brother Stacey, born in Kamloops, British Columbia, both played collegiately for Ohio State. Her grandmother was a figure skater who taught kids to skate for decades in Canada, and her grandfather owns a rink. And, her cousin, Scott Hartnell, is in his 16th NHL season as a left wing for the Columbus Blue Jackets after stints in Nashville and Philadelphia.

But, don’t ask Lilly her favorite hockey team — she says she has to like her cousin’s Blue Jackets, her hometown Tampa Bay Lightning, the Blackhawks (since she was born in Chicago) and the Penguins because she will be playing in their elite youth program.

“I’m a mash-up,’’ she says, laughing. 

While her three older sisters never expressed any interest in hockey — twins Lauren and Layne play college soccer at Division II West Liberty University in Wheeling, WV — Lilly asked to play when she was nine and instantly loved it.

“The second day I got off the skates, I told my dad I was going to be the best I could at this,’’ Lilly says.

Just a few months ago, Lilly thought for a moment she might be done with hockey. During a February travel game, Valerie says her daughter took an intentional cheap shot from a 6-foot-2, 200-pound opponent, sending Lilly into the boards and out of the rink on a stretcher.

“He literally tried to hurt me,’’ says Lilly, who is accepted and protected by her male teammates, she said, but occasionally, an opponent doesn’t take too kindly to being stopped by her on defense.

“I about had a heart attack,’’ Valerie says. “It was scary.”

Sean was coaching the team, and he rushed out to tend to Lilly, while an assistant coach immediately said to call for an ambulance. Her parents had decided last year that this spring would be Lilly’s last season, as the boys she played against had reached puberty and were growing bigger and stronger.

There is no open ice hitting allowed in the women’s game, although things can still get a little chippy when players get tangled up near the boards.

Like a true hockey player, though, Lilly returned to the ice a week later. She finished out the season with the Jr. Bulls, which ended in Nashville the first weekend in May, at a tournament.

Now, she impatiently is finishing out the school year while she waits for her golden opportunity in Pittsburgh. Lilly and her mother will soon start looking for an apartment, where they will stay for the upcoming Pens AAA season while keeping their home in Arbor Greene.

The schedule isn’t out yet, but last year’s AAA team opened the season with a Toronto-Boston-Vermont road trip, and also played games in Prague and Italy. Lilly doesn’t know what’s in store for 2017-18, but she can’t wait to find out.

She is confident this coming year will get her one step closer to her goal of playing collegiately at Ohio State, and then in the Olympics.

“I feel like this is definitely going to help me grow as a person and as a hockey player,’’ she says. “While I’m going to miss my teammates (at the Jr. Bulls), this is going to be great.”

Cypress Creek High Kicks Off Spring Football With A Handful Of Hopefuls

Head coach Mike Johnson (left) goes over a drill with some players at the second practice of the spring.

There may be no harder job in high school sports than being a football coach for a brand new school. Typically, you have no senior class to lean on, you have to build entirely new offensive and defensive units from scratch and you are, almost certainly, facing a debut season in which you will be lucky to win even one game.

That job will be even harder for Cypress Creek Middle/High School first-year head coach Mike Johnson.

At the first practice of the school’s first spring football session — where coaches will put in their offensive and defensive formations and unearth the leaders and identity of the team for the upcoming season, which starts in August —the Coyotes attracted two players.

The second day, there were five. Johnson said he wasn’t sure if anyone else would be showing up.

Because there is no place to practice yet at Cypress Creek, which is still under construction and opens in the fall, the five players — Kyle Cantwell, Kiaus Collins, Tim Ford, Devin Morris and Dylan Nagore — showed up the first week to train on an open field behind Weightman Middle School.

Dylan Nagore receives blocking instruction. The Coyotes will play their first season of high school football this fall.

Although it may have looked more like friends working out on their own than a football team, the future Coyotes earnestly dashed between orange cones, worked on their back-pedals and polished their blocking techniques in near silence under the watchful eye of Johnson and five assistant coaches.

“It’s tough being in the situation we are in,’’ Johnson said, alluding to the fact that many, if not most, of his future players are currently going through spring drills just a few hundred yards away at Wesley Chapel High (WCH), and still others were at Wiregrass Ranch High (WRH) practicing with the Bulls.

Therein lies Johnson’s predicament.

After a long, hotly-contested process that rezoned many of the students at WCH and WRH for the fall, a large number of parents and students are unhappy about having to change schools for a number of reasons. Leaving some of the better academic and extra curricular programs at their current schools is one sore spot.

The same goes for football players. Many now living in the Cypress Creek attendance zone are most likely hopefully awaiting school choice assignments in order to stay with their current teams, rather than become a Coyote.

The timing for Cypress Creek football also couldn’t be any worse — Wesley Chapel is coming off a 7-2 season, its best since 2004, while Wiregrass Ranch won a school record seven games and made the playoffs for the first time since 2010.

“It’s tough on a lot of people,’’ Johnson said. “But we are happy with what we have out here and what we are doing.”

That positive approach is shared by the handful of Coyotes, who despite leaving successful programs for one sure to take its lumps in the fall, are currently receiving what amounts to 1-on-1 football training

Ford, a skills position player for WRH the past two years, says that Cypress Creek offers a fresh start for him.

“It’s a good environment so far,’’ he said. “I like the coaches, they are all real nice.”

And Nagore, a guard for the WRH junior varsity last year before getting called up to varsity later in the season, is attacking the challenge.

“I was mad at first,’’ said Nagore, who also happens to be the sophomore class president at Wiregrass Ranch. “It was hard at first moving from a great program to one just starting out. But, you have to be optimistic and make the best of it. It’s nice being the start of something.”

Other than a few footballs and cones and a rope ladder for running speed drills, Cypress Creek High doesn’t even have any equipment yet. The players won’t do any contact drills, and it will be impossible, for now, to put in any plays.

Johnson, however, hopes all that changes when school choice comes out and his future roster arrives, and he begins a summer-long weight training program — if the new school can complete it in time.

Until then, he will continue to coach whoever shows up as he prepares for the first season.

“I still look at this optimistically,’’ Johnson says. “It’s a fantastic opportunity for myself and the players coming out. And, for a lot of kids, I think it offers a fresh start.”

Wiregrass Ranch High Boys Tennis Falls In State Championship Final

The Wiregrass Ranch High tennis team poses with the state runner-up from last week’s Class 4A state championships in Altamonte Springs.

The Wiregrass Ranch High (WRH) boys tennis team, arguably the most successful athletic program in Pasco County the past few seasons, fell just short of winning a third State tennis championship in five seasons.

The Bulls, champions in 2014 and 2015, fell to Parkland Stoneman Douglas High 4-1 in the Class 4A championship match on April 27 in Altamonte Springs. Noah Makarome, who was undefeated in his previous two singles matches, and Destiny Okungbowa were both playing their first sets when the match was called after Douglas clinched the title with their fourth win (out of seven lines).

Josh Abrams, the Bulls No. 5 singles player, pulled out the only victory for WRH in the final by defeating Jabari Cole 6-1, 2-6, 11-9, to finish 3-0 on the week.

The Bulls fell behind quickly when Douglas captured both doubles matches in convincing straight sets.

Wiregrass Ranch, which is 111-2 in head-to-head matches since 2010, during which time it hasn’t lost a Pasco County match, had to battle hard to reach the finals.

In the state quarterfinals April 26, it defeated Fleming Island 4-1, as Makarome won 6-4, 6-1, at No. 1 singles, Jared and Josh Abrams picked up wins at Nos. 4 and 5 singles and Kanishkh Ramesh  and Okungbowa won at No. 2 doubles with a 4-6, 6-4, 10-2 victory.

The semifinals, played earlier on the same day as the finals, saw the Bulls defeat Tampa’s George Steinbrenner High  4-2 with the same combination of winners.

Makarome, who has signed to play at the University of Pennsylvania next year, defeated Nicholas Cary 6-3, 6-1, at No. 1 singles, and the Abrams brothers both won their singles matches, with Jared winning 6-4, 6-0, at No. 4, and Josh winning 6-0, 6-0, at No. 5.

Ramesh and Okungbowa won at No. 2 doubles 6-4, 6-3. The title was the first for the Douglas High tennis team.