The Wesley Chapel High volleyball team won its first District title since 2004, won two Regional playoff games for the first time in program history and played in its first-ever Region championship, but fell short of a State finals appearance when the ‘Cats dropped a heartbreaking 25-27, 25-17, 25-23, 25-20 decision to Ocala Vanguard on Nov. 6 in the 5A-Region 2 title game.
But Wesley Chapel, which finished with a 19-6 record and made the playoffs for the second straight year under coach Brittany Collison, will be expecting to better their historic season next year, as they will return the core of the team and the leader in every statistical category.
Junior hitter Chloe Danielson, who set a school record with 375 kills, including 20 in the Region championship match, and is a contender for Pasco County Player of the Year honors, is the biggest piece of the puzzle.
But, the Wildcats also should return junior setter Jenna Ly (631 assists and 46 aces, both team highs), sophomore libero Brooke Ashkenase (school record 367 digs) and sophomore hitters Grace Korta and Lizzy Ekechi, who each had more than 100 kills. You’ll get ‘em next year, girls! — JCC
While many New Tampa parents can sign their kids up for leagues in sports like baseball, basketball, football and soccer that they themselves played as kids, the same opportunity hasn’t existed for the area’s large Indian population.
But now, that has changed.
Nagesh Nayak and Prahlad Madabhushi, the president and managing director, respectively, of the Tampa Premier League (TPL) — which is based at Wesley Chapel District Park on Boyette Rd. — have begun holding youth cricket camps at New Tampa’s Community Park on Thursday nights. The hope is to take younger kids and spark interest, and provide the tools and knowledge, in a game that is near and dear to the hearts of their parents and their Indian culture.
“The reason we started it was there was a great deal of interested parents, asking if there was any cricket coaching for their kids,” said Madabhushi. “There is a large Indian population in New Tampa, so there was a lot of demand.”
Nayak and Madabhushi reached out to City of Tampa Council member Luis Viera for a place to hold their camps, and Viera helped secure the New Tampa location.
While you can find kids learning how to play in the streets and playgrounds in India (like American children learn baseball, basketball and soccer), that is not the case for cricket in the U.S. Nor are there any leagues for younger players, like Little League baseball or Pop Warner football.
Nayak says he would like to provide something close to that for interested players in New Tampa and Wesley Chapel. The goal is to develop new players who could then advance to playing actual matches in local adult leagues.
Roughly 40 eager players showed up on Sept. 23 for the first New Tampa camp, which has 4-6 coaches available to teach each week. The kids, who range in age from 5 to 16, are shown how to throw and hit the ball, while also learning the rules of the game.
“I think everyone liked what they were experiencing,” says Nayak, an accomplished cricket player himself. “Hitting the ball, throwing the ball, catching the ball….especially hitting the ball…they enjoyed it.”
Madabhushi has been pleased with the early reception to the camps.
“It’s been amazing,” he says. “The kids are so into it, some of them don’t want to go home. And, the parents appreciate it as well.”
While the first camp hosted all children of Indian parents, Nayak says the camps are open to everyone. In fact, he says, because of the similarity to baseball — both sports involve a pitcher (called a bowler in cricket) throwing to a batter whose goal is to hit the ball — he’d be interested to see current and former baseball players take a shot at cricket.
“I think that would be a good transfer of talent,” he says.
Nayak and other adult players in the area typically play on Saturdays and Sundays on a makeshift pitch on some extra, unused land at the Wesley Chapel District Park, roughly five miles north of New Tampa. Their hope is to eventually secure a regulation field, level and well-maintained, at the same park, for future matches and tournaments.
As the new players at the New Tampa camp develop and learn the game, they could graduate to games in Wesley Chapel with the better players.
“Out of the kids we had out there, 25 are between the ages of 5-12,” said Madabhushi. “But, there’s also about 8 or 10 of them who are ages 13-16, who we can take it to the next level. The first step is to move up to the adult league, and when they get familiar with that level, to take them to tournaments.”
Weather permitting, the camps are held every Thursday from 6:30 p.m.-8:30 p.m. and cost $70 for eight weeks of training.
For more information, email tampapremierleague@gmail.com, or visit Facebook @TampaCricket.
“Last year wasn’t…that good. I didn’t run a very good race at Regionals. But it definitely motivated me on a new level . Not making it to State probably helped me. It got me more fired up for track.”
— Cypress Creek High junior Zack Poekert
For most cross country runners, the offseason is all about putting in the miles. However, after putting in the miles before his sophomore season, Cypress Creek’s Zack Poekert switched things up a bit for 2021.
Instead, the Coyotes junior built more “tempo” runs — longer distances at a slower pace, shorter distances at a faster pace — into his training regimen and the results are paying off this season.
After winning a preseason jamboree in Palmetto — his first-ever first-place finish in high school — Zack reeled off four straight top-5 finishes against stiff competition, including a first-place finish at the River Ridge Invitational, and has emerged as a State contender in Class 3A.
Getting in the tempo work this summer, he says, has made him stronger and more confident.
“I notice the difference,” he says. “It made me a lot more confident going into these meets knowing that my training was there, and that I could compete with these (other runners) now.”
Zack Poekert (left), with coach John Hoffman, after his fifth-place finish at the Florida Horse Park Invitational in Ocala on Sept. 3 (Photos courtesy of the Poekerts)
Zack, who broke 17 minutes for the first time at the jamboree, broke 16 minutes for the first time when he ran a 15:58 to finish fifth at the Florida Horse Park Invitational in Ocala on Sept. 3.
Zack has been ranked as high as No. 18 in the state according to flrunners.com, and earlier this season had the third-best time in Class 3A.
Zack says his goal this year is to run a 15:30, a steep drop from the 16:30 or so he has been averaging. But, he is motivated and ran a 15:43 in his River Ridge win.
He was a freshman on the Coyotes team that made it to the State meet in 2019, and as a sophomore in 2020 helped the team win its first-ever district championship. However, the Coyotes did not qualify for a return trip to States, and Zack just missed going as an individual.
A strong track season (4:28 in the mile, 9:48 in the two-mile) has him ready for a bounce back.
Zack’s passion for running started when he was younger, running with his mother Ronda, a former track and cross country standout for Plant, who helped the Panthers to the 1991 and ‘92 State cross country championships.
When Ronda got back into running after years away from the sport, Zack asked if he could join her. Together, they trained and eventually ran in a handful of 5K races, like Miles for Moffitt and Gasparilla. Eventually, Zack got to the point where he was leaving Ronda in the dust.
“I would see him at the beginning of the race, and at the end of the race,” says Ronda, laughing.
His passion for the sport, however, grew quickly during his freshman year at Cypress Creek, buoyed by his trip to the State meet.
Ronda gives credit for Zack’s success to his coaches, John Hoffman and Elsa Rehberg, and dad Bryan will occasionally go over the course with his son.
When Ronda does have a tip to lend, it’s usually about the mental aspect of racing, and strategy. Primarily, running your own race even if the rest of the field decides to go out either too fast or too slow, and then maintaining where your tempo needs to be during the race, is paramount to success, she says.
“It’s 100 percent,” Ronda says. “If you let that slip throughout the race, it can throw off everything.”
That’s good advice in a tough District 3A-2, which features last year’s State runner-up Sunlake High and standouts like Colby Robbins and Alex Pena. Poekert already has run against both at multiple meets this season, finishing behind them by roughly 10 seconds in a few races, with more head-to-head opportunities to come. That competition will make Poekert, and the rest of the Coyotes, better by season’s end.
Poekert says he is looking forward to the challenge.
“Our team is really young but you can see that they are starting to get really good,” Poekert says. “But if we don’t go as a team, I plan on getting back to States as an individual. My goal is to run that 15:30, and be All-State at the State meet.”
Quarterback Rocco Becht stands on the launch pad, ready to reach the stars.
He has been waiting.
He waited his turn as a freshman at Wiregrass Ranch High as the junior varsity starter, was prematurely thrown into the starting role as a sophomore and saw his junior year clipped by an inexperienced team and Covid-19. He has still managed to put up good numbers, but they have not met his expectations.
He’s a senior now. And he is ready.
“I definitely feel like I have something to prove,” he says.
Rocco is ready for liftoff.
10…9…8….
Rocco is the son of former Tampa Bay Buccaneers tight end Anthony Becht, although he shares few of his pop’s imposing physical attributes. Anthony was a 6-foot-6, 270-pound monster of a tight end. Rocco is a little on the smallish side — he’s now 6’-1”, 185 lbs. — and says that when he played Pop Warner football, “I’m not going to lie, I was afraid to get hit.”
However, he acquired the love for football watching dad catch passes and block defenders in the NFL. And, he could throw a football better than the other kids, so he ended up being the quarterback. He played flag football for Liberty Middle School in New Tampa, and full-pads Pop Warner football for the South Pasco Predators.
What he lacked in physical stature he made up for with hard work and smarts.
As a freshman at Wiregrass Ranch in 2018, he started for the JV. Just a month before the start of the 2019 season, varsity starter Hunter Helton bolted for Armwood. Rocco was elevated to starter, and threw for 1,985 yards, 21 touchdowns and just eight interceptions while
leading the Bulls to the postseason and a 7-4 final record.
“He got thrown into the fire,” Anthony says. “Physically, he couldn’t develop his sophomore year because he was still young and just getting into weights. Mentally, he had to speed that process up. I didn’t know what to expect. He wasn’t very big then. I was worried about him physically…but he did a great job with it. Once his sophomore season was done…he started thinking, ‘You know, I got something here.’”
Rocco says until that season, he wasn’t sure if he hadn’t peaked, if there was a “next level” waiting for him. But, fully committed afterwards, he set his sights on being great.
7…6…5…
From the end of his sophomore season through this summer, few have dedicated themselves more to their craft than Rocco.
“I’m not sure anyone has worked harder,” says Wiregrass Ranch head coach Mark Kantor. “He’s dedicated, that’s for sure. He sets the example.”
Bryson Rodgers will be one of Rocco’s top targets this season.
Rocco went to his father after the 2019 season and told Anthony that he was all in. It was all Anthony needed to hear. It started in the garage of their Wesley Chapel home, where, as the pandemic raged, dad laid out the roadmap to success for his son, which included working out, eating right, watching film and absorbing the game.
Rocco continued honing his skills with noted quarterback coach Chip Bennett and his son C.J. in Tampa. He survived a junior slump in a Covid-19-shortened season and this past offseason attacked the recruiting camp circuit with a vengeance.
In April, he orally committed to the Big 12’s Iowa State University in Ames. Although he had received an offer — with more likely to come — from Ole Miss a week before he committed, Rocco passed on Lane Kiffin and the prestigious Southeastern Conference and stuck with the Cyclones, who offered him first, during his sophomore year.
A 4.0 student, Rocco will graduate from Wiregrass Ranch in December and enroll at Iowa State in January.
Also in April, Rocco was named the MVP at a Rivals Camp in Miami, earning an invite to the prestigious Rivals100 5-Star Challenge in Atlanta in June.
Competing against the likes of Cade Klubnik (Clemson commitment), A.J. Swann (Maryland commit) and other higher-rated quarterbacks, Rocco stunningly dominated the event and again earned MVP honors.
“I was told I was one of the last guys picked to go to the Rivals thing,” Rocco says. “I went out there and balled. That put a bunch of confidence in me. It gave me a lot of momentum for this season.”
Two weeks ago, Rocco earned another star in the Rivals rankings, making him officially a 4-Star-rated quarterback.
4…3….
This season, Rocco will lead a Bulls team that is loaded on offense and still developing on defense, and is hoping to open one of its most promising seasons Friday. The Bulls Aug. 27 opener against Hernando and the originally scheduled game Friday against Wesley Chapel were postponed. No replacement has been announced.
No matter when it officially starts, Rocco is “stoked” about the possibilities this season. Like many of his teammates, he has been working hard for this moment.
Anthony will be calling the plays at Wiregrass Ranch this season, as the team’s offensive coordinator. In the spring game, Rocco threw four TD passes to three different receivers. He and wideout Bryson Rodgers — who has offers from Alabama and Florida, to name a few — might be the best QB-WR tandem in Tampa Bay high school football.
But, they are just pieces of a puzzle, Anthony says. “Rocco wants to win,” he says. “That’s what is most important. Not how many stars you have, not how many yards you have, but can we go to the playoffs? You throw for 450 yards, tweet that out, people put likes on it, and it’s good for a week. He wants to do something with this team that lasts a lifetime.”
Rocco may have been a late bloomer, but he still has plenty of quarterback swagger. He says he believes that the Bulls can win every game this season and make a deep run in the playoffs. He has circled the Mitchell game on Sept. 10, after the Mustangs returned the opening kickoff in last year’s game against the Bulls en route to a 42-14 romp. Powerhouses like Armwood and Tampa Bay Tech await the Bulls as well.
“I feel like I’ve earned everything I’ve gotten, from hard work and dedication to the game,” Rocco says. “It’s going to pay off at the end of the day. I can’t wait to see what’s in store for me.”
Yes, Rocco Becht is on the launch pad, ready to reach the stars.
10 Quick Things about Wharton’s 48-0 win over Freedom in the 2021 season opener for both teams
1. Wharton is now 13-6 against its rivals right down Bruce B. Downs Blvd., but Friday’s win only punctuated what is the most lopsided stretch in the series. In the last three years since Freedom’s last win, the Wildcats have outscored the Patriots 140-20. The only other three-year stretch that comes even close is 2010-12, when the Wildcats outscored Freedom 99-21.
2. Fridays game was never in doubt. Freedom quarterback Alex De la Cruz had about 2.3 seconds each play to get rid of the ball, and rushed two interceptions on his first two throws, leading to Wharton scores. After a three-and-out on Freedom’s next series, it was 20-0 midway through the opening quarter.
3. It was 41-0 with 8:44 remaining in the first half, meaning the Wildcats were scoring 2.7 points a minute, and on pace to score 129.4 points. Freedom accepted the running clock shortly after that, choosing not to wait until halftime.
Wharton QB Carson Mohler.
4. Senior Carson Mohler, a Plant City transfer, is Wharton’s new QB, he certainly looks the part at 6-foot-2, 225.
He was 8-for-18 for 176 and three TDs last season for the Raiders.
Friday night, he was 6-for-8 for 161 yards and three TDs, completing passes to five different receivers.
5. The only receiver to catch more than one pass from Mohler was Cameron Cobb. He caught two of the widest-openest touchdowns you will ever see. And no, widest-openest isn’t a word, but it fits in this case.
6. Sophomore Arkese Parks had an 87-yard touchdown run on his first touch of the night, and finished with 90 yards. Starter Keith Morris also scored a touchdown.
Cameron Campbell blocked a punt. You won’t believe what happened next
7. Wharton’s defense, even without Division-I recruits like Daveon Crouch, Booker Pickett Jr. and Dijon Johnson in the lineup, came up with a number of big plays. Senior linebacker Henry Griffith had his first career interception leading to a score, lineman Micheal James returned a fumble 20 yards for a score to make it 27-0 in the first quarter, and linebacker Cam Campbell scored a touchdown as well, but it deserves its own number.
8. So, De la Cruz is punting for Freedom, and Campbell blocks the low kick right back to Patriot kicker, who punts it again, right into the hands of…Campbell. The Wildcat returns it 20 yards for a touchdown. How does one even score that? Is it legal? Has it ever happened before in the history of football? I have no idea. (And while we are at it, have two Camerons on the same team but one playing defense and one playing offense ever scored touchdowns in the same in football history?)
9. Freedom ran 23 offensive plays in the first half, to just 14 for Wharton. But the Patriots were outgained 260 yards to minus-13.
10. This game didn’t tell Wharton coach Mike Williams anything about his team. “Next week’s game will, though,” he said. Wharton travels to Jesuit for what should be a real slobberknocker.
