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New Tampa Rec Expansion Debuts Today

The much-anticipated and long-awaited expansion of the New Tampa Recreation Center (NTRC) in Tampa Palms, which dates all the way back to the day the facility debuted in 2008 with a waiting list of more than 1,000 kids, has finally come to fruition.

Today at 3:30 p.m., almost two years to the day of the expansion’s groundbreaking on April 12, 2019, the NTRC will host a ribbon-cutting ceremony and reopen with 7,300 square feet of extra space, featuring three new rooms (convertible to five, with partitions) that will provide new space for gymnastics and dance instruction, community meetings, adult and senior fitness classes and athletic training.

The expansion cost roughly $2.6-million, after years of budget battles that saw the long-planned project get passed over in 2012 and again in 2016.

“It’s been a long time coming,” said Tampa City Council member Luis Viera, who as the District 7 Council member, helped rally New Tampa residents, led by Tampa Palms attorney Tracy Falkowitz, to show up at the budget deliberations in 2017 and implore the Council to keep the money in the budget for the project.

The end result will expand not only the NTRC’s profile, but also its reach.

“We’re known for gymnastics and dance classes, but the expansion makes us more than that,” said Heather Wolf-Erickson, the athletics, aquatics and special facilities manager for the City of Tampa’s Parks & Recreation Department, who took us on a tour of the new add-on prior to the March 3 opening. “Kids are one aspect of a family, but we also wanted to give the parents that sit here during the practices an opportunity to do some fitness classes and other things, too.”

Wolf-Erickson also is excited about offering classes for older residents, as well as space for community gatherings and meetings. All of that will be available in the first multi-purpose room you pass upon entering the expanded facility, which has a partition to give it more flexibility to host two classes at once.

“We can get a little more creative with what we can offer (now),” Wolf-Erickson says.

Next to that room is what Wolf-Erickson calls the “fun” room — a new mini-gym for those just starting out in gymnastics, typically ages 5-and-below.

The space was designed for “the littles” who, until now, had to share space with the bigger kids in the NTRC’s large 12,500-sq.-ft. main gymnasium. Now, instead of being lost in a forest of taller gymnasts, the younger kids have a great new space of their own.

“It’s easy to get distracted (in the main gymnastics area),” said Linda Hall, Site Supervisor II for the City of Tampa. “When the big kids are in there, they’re doing big kid (moves) and it’s easy (for the younger kids) to get distracted.”

Also making the new room unique is the equipment itself, like the rings and parallel bars, which are smaller to fit smaller hands. And, an inflatable trampoline and foam ball pit are used for practicing jumping and flipping.

“Everything is catered to them,” Wolf-Erickson says of the new room. “We’re not teaching them any big gymnastic moves in here, we’re working on upper-body strength, hand-eye coordination and patience. When kids have fun learning and doing physical things, they’re more apt to come back.”

Adjustable Batting Cage, Too

Wolf-Erickson says her favorite room is the 1,760-sq.-ft. rectangular training “box,” which resembles popular, more rustic training facilities that look like warehouses, with large fans, a garage door that opens and even a batting cage that is stored above the floor and can be lowered with the press of a button.

Baseball and softball athletes will be the obvious beneficiaries of the batting cage, but when the cage is suspended above the floor, the area can be used for almost any kind of training, from football to soccer to any kind of fitness and weight training. It also will come in handy on rainy days.

“This space is going to get used and used and used,” Wolf-Erickson said. “When designing it, they asked, ‘What are you going to do there?’ We said we’ll show you. It’s just a little bit more different than what we’ve done here. (This room) will be more open to the community.”

While technically part of the NTRC expansion, the training box is practically its own separate space. It has its own climate control, separate from the rest of the facility, and the door leading in from the rest of the expanded spaces can be locked down, with a door leading outside (and inside, monitored by a keypad) for those who are training later than regular building hours.

“We can have this open 24/7 without impacting the staffing requirement,” Wolf-Erickson said. “It is its own space, with its own restroom. It was pretty well thought out.”

In fact, all three of the new spaces have their own restrooms, and there will be another bathroom that can be accessed from the playground, a touch sure to be appreciated by parents.

The two rooms with dance and gymnastics also have multiple large windows for parents to watch their children, similar to the rooms in the main building.

After years of having to turn folks away, or at least put them on a waiting list that had as many as 1,800 kids on it, Wolf-Erickson hopes the new space gets children off the waiting lists and helps free up more room for more students to sign up. Pre-Covid, the NTRC had more than 4,000 class slots programmed each week, and saw nearly 8,000 gymnasts and dancers receive training every year at the popular facility.

Wolf-Erickson said she wants to see the community, from beginners all the way to seniors, utilize the facility for exercise, training and other events. While all those things may be offered at other places in the area, Wolf-Erickson says the plans for the pricing and community memberships at the NTRC are still being finalized, “But we believe it should be affordable, and we won’t be out-priced here,” she says.

For more info, call (813) 975-2794 or visit Tampa.Gov/parks-and-recreation/activities-recreation/gym-and-dance/new-tampa-center.

New Tampa Recreation Center

F45 Training At The Grove Offers Super Workouts & Cleanliness

Kim Balfe can tell you all about how great the classes are at the F45 Training at The Grove studio that she owns with her husband Bob, or how wonderful their instructors are, how the members have raved about the workouts or even how successful the fitness facility has been since opening in the middle of the pandemic last summer. And she does.

But nowadays, she starts with this instead: F45 Training at The Grove is clean and safe.

Really, really clean and safe.

In today’s world, where Covid-19 has wreaked havoc on local businesses and hit gyms harder than most others — even delaying the opening of Wesley Chapel’s F45 Training a few months last spring — that’s pretty big news.

“Cleaning is always a priority, especially in a gym,” Kim says. “We feel we have a responsibility when it comes to the safety of our members. We want people to see that we take it seriously.”

*When you’re done at one station at F45 Training, it’s time to sanitize your equipment before moving on to the next one.*

How seriously? Kim completed a rigorous course, which she likened to getting a Ph.D, in order for F45 Training to receive facility accreditation from the Global Biorisk Advisory Council (GBAC), which helps organizations and businesses respond to biological threats and biohazard situations through education and training.

A sticker will be displayed on the gym front window affirming their accreditation, and Pasco County reimbursed the cost of earning the designation. Getting the accreditation involved studying pages and pages of documents and learning all of the policies and procedures required to have a clean gym. Kim also says she attended a 10-hour class.

While cleanliness is much more at the forefront of most people’s minds these days — 20 percent of potential new members ask about the safety of returning to the gym — F45 has combined that with socially-distant classes that add to the safety measures. While some classes are more crowded for those that prefer it, a number of offerings, like the one we attended on a recent Thursday morning, had a surprising amount of room between participants. No one rotated stations before first disinfecting the equipment they had just used.

“We have one of the bigger F45s in the area,’’ Kim says of the 3,300-sq.-ft. facility, which also has showers. “There’s plenty of room.”

The cleanliness helped convince Kim Shephard to get back in the gym. The gym she usually works out at where she lives in New Tampa has been closed, and after almost a year off, it was time to get back to work. Shepard admits she starting putting on some weight during the pandemic, but it’s currently coming off and she says she has dropped five percent body fat since joining F45.

“It’s been a life changer for me,” says the 36-year-old Shephard. “I love it. I like the small classes, the trainers get to know you on a personal level and it really is a community. And the gym is super-duper clean.”

The F in F45 stands for Functional Training, which focuses on strengthening muscles you use for everyday activities and emphasizes core strength and stability. The 45 is how many minutes (almost) every workout lasts.

There are 2,700 different exercises and 36 different workouts as members move from station to station, with Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays focusing on cardio, and Tuesday and Thursdays for resistance training.

“Every single day is a totally different workout,” says Bob who (as does Kim) also partakes in many of the classes.

The classes all have names, like 22, Bears, Moon Hopper and All-Star. And, the classes also are universal. If you are doing the Angry Bird at The Grove location, then so are fitness members at F45s in Sacramento, San Antonio and Sydney, Australia (where the company was founded in 2011 by equities trader Rob Deutsch).

The only class that is longer than 45 minutes is Saturday’s class, which is an hour-long hybrid, called Hollywood, which F45 calls its pinnacle showcase, and is sometimes accompanied by a live DJ.

“Saturday is the big fun day,” Kim says. “It’s my favorite day.”

F45 remains one of the hottest fitness franchises in the world, with more than 1,750 studios in 45 countries, including more than 650 in the U.S. It is part of a trend towards high-tech fitness boutiques which offer more personalized care than the traditional big-box gyms.

As an example, an experienced fitness participant can take part in the same class as a newcomer, and the trainers take special care to make sure the experience is enjoyable for both, by offering those who can’t physically perform certain exercises a less-challenging alternative option.

“Sometimes people come in and know nothing and have never been in a gym before,“ says head trainer Zach Johnston. “We’re here to guide and help them. F45 is very scalable. There are some advanced movements, but they can all be regressed down.”

*There’s plenty of room for social distancing at F45 Training at The Grove. To the far right, head trainer Zach Johnston helps a client work on the proper form during a recent class.*

Large television monitors show how to do every move, and Zach and his team will help if any of the exercises are too much for you.

Zach, who has a Bachelor of Science in Biological Health Science and a Master of Science degree in Exercise Science from the University of South Florida, is beyond qualified to train people, and says he chose F45 because he loves the concept of functional workouts, as well as the community that the fitness facility is building.

“I feel like people love coming in,” he says, “and I don’t think they even think about Covid. I think people see the certification and know it’s safe here.”

F45 Wesley Chapel also has recurring challenges, nutritional coaching and meal plans via F45’s app and other perks — to further differentiate itself from the fitness pack. It’s another community-building benefit that F45 Training at The Grove strives to achieve.

Bob and Kim say they love the social aspect of F45. The company has a slick website, highly-active Facebook and Instagram pages — which can be a good place to find specials — and stays in touch with its members via text. Doing so helps build camaraderie amongst those trying to get and stay in shape, and also offers the kind of accountability that is difficult for many to have working out on their own.

“For a lot of people, this is all about being healthy and staying in shape, to strengthen their immune systems and their mental health,” Kim says. “And, for many of them, this is their getaway. We’re glad we can be that for them.”

Best of all, you can give it a try for free. F45 Training offers one free week of classes for prospective members.

F45 Training at The Grove (6207 Wesley Grove Blvd., Suite 102) offers classes at 5, 6, 7 and 9 a.m. weekday mornings, and at 5:30 and 6:30 p.m. weekday evenings. Saturday classes are at 7, 8:15 and 9:30 a.m., and Sunday classes are at 8 and 9 a.m. For more info, call (813) 683-5222, or visit F45Ttraining.com/TheGroveAtWesleyChapel/home.

Covid-19 F45

Your CBD Store On S.R. 54 Keeps Adding New, Healthy Options

Debbie Brooks says she started taking CBD years ago to relieve the pain in her feet from neuropathy, following chemotherapy treatments for her cancer.

Long before CBD, or cannabidiol, became more mainstream, Brooks, who is 61 years old and lives in Webster, FL, had to search smoke shops for CBD relief, which seemed to vary from shop to shop.

“It was never the same every time,” she says. “Sometimes, I swear I thought it was just olive oil.”

Brooks eventually discovered Lisa Feigel, who owned a Your CBD Store franchise in Englewood, FL, located two hours away, but who offered online ordering. The CBD products she received from Feigel were better, never failed and provided consistent relief.

So, when Feigel opened her second location in Wesley Chapel, which has been open since August of 2019 in the Freedom Plaza on S.R. 54 — despite an hour drive — Brooks became one of her first, and most regular customers.

“Lisa is great,” Cook says. “She has so much knowledge, it’s almost like she’s a scientist. And they have so many great products that always help.”

Cook’s story is a familiar one to Feigel, who says that many of her customers come to her looking for reliable relief for a number of symptoms, ranging from pain and muscle aches to anxiety and insomnia.

“They don’t want to become reliant on opioids,” Lisa says.

Your CBD Store is a boutique, and doesn’t stock hundreds of items that promise to do a million different things. It focuses on what CBD does best by providing relief, relaxation and, sometimes, a much-needed respite from your daily grind.

As CBD has become more accepted and popular, Lisa says she doesn’t have to educate customers who correlate it with marijuana as much as she did in the past. CBD is derived from hemp, which is a variety of cannabis (as is marijuana), but with less than 0.3% of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the ingredient that gets you “high.” However, CBD still retains all of the health benefits of cannabis.

CBD products are offered as full spectrum, which are generally stronger and contain no more than the legal limit of 0.3% THC, and broad spectrum, which have no THC at all.

In the last year, Feigel has added a number of new, popular items to her inventory, such as CBG- and CBN-infused gummies (above), tinctures and water solubles.

CBG, or cannabigerol, and CBN, or cannabinol, are relatively new to the CBD product world and are currently undergoing intensive scientific study. CBN is THC-free and helps cause a drowsy effect that can aid with sleeping, while CBG is touted more for its potential therapeutic and anti-inflammatory effects. Feigel calls it the “super momma of cannabinoids.”

“Anxiety and insomnia are the biggest two concerns when people come into the store,” Feigel says, adding that those two things can lead to depression and other maladies. “It’s like a domino effect.”

CBD, Lisa says, helps bring your mental state and body back into balance.

“We all have about 150 different cannabinoids in our system already,” Lisa says, but sometimes, outside forces — injury, stress from work, illness, etc. — can disrupt the production of them. CBD will bind with the CB1 and CB2 cannabinoid receptors in our brains to help bring the body back into balance, or homeostasis.

“It’s just a natural supplement we’re putting back into our system,” she says. This can be done via tinctures (like an eyedropper, placed right under the tongue), water soluble (which dissolve in water) products, edible gummies and even vapes.

Your CBD store offers pet products in any form, including peanut butter- and bacon-flavored treats and biscuits, for dogs who get freaked out by the sound of thunder and fireworks or have separation or other anxiety.

CBD has many uses and benefits. Your CBD store offers pet products in any form, including peanut butter- and bacon-flavored treats and biscuits, for dogs who get freaked out by the sound of thunder and fireworks or have separation or other anxiety. Feigel says she gives CBD to her 103-pound yellow Labrador retriever for car trips to the groomer, as well as to help reduce her rescue shih-tzu’s seizures. And, for the first time, the store even now has CBD cat treats.

There also are award-winning skincare products and topical creams for aches and pains (Neighborhood News publisher Gary Nager is a fan), and even a new Maxine & Morgan line for women’s wellness, such as for menstrual cramps. There’s also a CBD coffee creamer available.

One of the newest products is a Raw Hemp CBG Flower, which contains high-levels of CBG. It offers flexibility in that can be smoked or even used in cooking and for making smoothies and tea, to name a few.

“It’s all due to the Your CBD Store franchise, which is always striving for more and better products,” Lisa says. “And, there’s still so many things coming out on the horizon.”

Lisa says she was drawn to the power of CBD due to her own fibromyalgia, and has used it for other things as well.

Her daughter Ashley, who manages the Wesley Chapel location, uses CBD for joint pain and anxiety. Even Lisa’s mom, who didn’t know anything about CBD when Lisa became a franchise owner and joked that her daughter was now a “drug dealer,” is now an avid user of the topical creams, which help with her arthritis.

SunMed CBD is the exclusive supplier to Your CBD Stores. The company has its own farms in Denver, CO, where they grow hemp, and the processing of those plants takes place in Florida.

Lisa and her staff hope that customers will choose CBD products over opioids and other addictive and sometimes dangerous drugs prescribed by doctors. They will help you find the right doses and forms of CBD for you, and best way to maximize its effects.

Those effects are wide-ranging, says Debbie Brooks. She had stopped taking any CBD for a few weeks because of the long drive and busy schedule taking care of her elderly parents. But once off it, she realized that it did more than just reduce her pain, it had been helping her handle all the stress in her life. So, she says, it was back to Wesley Chapel for more relief.

“It helped in more aspects of my life than I even realized,” Cook says. “It’s well worth the travel, just for the great staff and the expertise Lisa has. She is just amazing.”

Your CBD Store Wesley Chapel is located at 30044 S.R. 54. It is open Monday.-Friday, 10 a.m.-6 p.m., and 11 a.m.-4 p.m. on Saturday. It is closed on Sunday. For more information, call (813) 536-0119, visit CBDrx4u.com/find-us/Florida/Wesley-Chapel or search “YourCBDStoreWesleyChapel” on Facebook.

CBD gummies hemp Your CBD Store

Is tonight the night for Zach’s Second Shot At ‘American Idol’?

If you remember Zach D’Onofrio’s first appearance on ABC-TV’s “American Idol” in 2018, we have news for you.

You ain’t seen nothing yet.

The kid that gave socks to the judges, danced with Katie Perry (see photo on next page) and then wowed with his voice — when it transformed from Kermit the Frog to Frank Sinatra to earn a golden ticket — is now older and wiser and back on the show.

The Wiregrass Ranch High graduate, who now attends Florida Southern College, will appear on the audition shows in the coming weeks. He did not appear in the season premiere, which aired locally on Feb. 14 at 8 p.m. on WFTS-TV, or the second episode. He hasn’t been told when his episode will air. But he did leave a teaser on his Instagram this weekend.

So, what happens this time? A lot.

But we can’t tell you.

Just like last time, Zach has been sworn to secrecy until the episode airs. His family, a good friend and his girlfriend know, and we are privy to a few of Zach’s twists and turns this time around, so we could tell you, but then we’d have to…well, you know how the saying goes.

Zach’s return to “Idol” actually began in August when he signed up for Zoom auditions. The producers instantly recognized him, and he sang “No Fire” by S. Grant Parker while playing the ukelele, and the following round, sang the same song and also played piano while singing “Places We Won’t Walk” by Bruno Major.

Zach wasn’t sure he had passed, especially when August passed, and so did September. Then, a friend received a rejection email, so Zach thought he might still be alive. In mid-October, he finally got word that he was headed to Ojai, CA — which is in Ventura County about 90 minutes northwest of Los Angeles — for live auditions the first week of November, and mum’s been the word ever since.

“It’s kind of fun keeping the secret,” Zach says.

Although it was his second time in front of judges Lionel Ritchie, Luke Bryan and Perry, Zach says he still felt a little trepidation about his second chance.

“I was pretty nervous seeing the judges again because it’s been so long,” he says. “When I walked out, they were like, ‘Oh, we know Zach.’” He sang “Golden Slumbers” by the Beatles.

“And, that’s pretty much all I can tell you,” he says, chuckling.

A lot has changed since Zach, then a squeaky-voiced 16-year-old who had only started singing a year before, was cut following the first competition in Los Angeles.

He returned to Wesley Chapel, won a few singing competitions, graduated from Wiregrass Ranch and was accepted into the University of South Florida, where he was going to study biomedical science and become a doctor one day.

But, “American Idol” had awakened something in him. He wanted to hone his singing skills. He wanted to help make music. He wanted to follow what had become his passion.

After one year at USF, Zach, now 20, transferred to Florida Southern and is now a music management major. He says he would like to manage artists one day, help them with auditions and, of course, cut his own first album.

“I think only reason I wanted to be a doctor was because they make a lot of money, but would that make me happy?,” Zach says. “(Being on) ‘American Idol’ made me happy. Singing made me happy. I liked the performing and talking to fans. So why not commit to music fully?”

Why not try “American Idol” again?

The last thing Zach told us in 2018 after his surprisingly quick end on the show was that he was encouraged by fellow contestants to try again — and he told them he would. And, that thought has always stuck in his head.

His girlfriend, Catie Turner, was on the show with Zach in 2018 and finished sixth. While she can’t compete again, she never stopped encouraging Zach to try.

“It’s always been kind of stuck in the back of my head that I would go back and try again,” Zach says. “It was inevitable. I want to prove to myself that I can do it again. My goal was to make it farther this time than last time.”

Zach says being in California during the pandemic was concerning, especially making the trip out there. But, with Covid-19 tests every other day, and the threat of being sent home if you tested positive, Zach says the auditions were smooth. Each contestant was encouraged to stay confined to their room.

“It was kind of like house arrest,” Zach jokes. “But I felt safe the whole time. Everyone wore masks. You won’t see people wearing them while on stage, but anyone who wasn’t singing at the time had masks on.”

Zach says people still recognize him in public as the “American Idol,” though most seem to remember his affinity for socks. But his “socks appeal” is gone, and this season’s version of Zach might be best described as “sweater late than never,” as he makes his return with a different style.

As for the rest, Zach says you’ll have to tune in on Sunday nights.

American IDol Zach D'Onofrio

Congrats to New Tampa’s Teachers of the Year!

Here are this year’s Teacher of the Year nominees, as chosen by their respective schools in New Tampa. Also listed are the Ida S. Baker (ISB) Diversity Educator of the Year and the Instructional Support Employee (ISE) of the Year nominees from each New Tampa school.