Nicolas Gordon leaps over the 4-foot-tall “wall” as he begins the obstacle course at Cypress Creek Middle/High School
While the rest of her classmates were inside classrooms and sitting at their desks, Cypress Creek Middle/High (CCMH) seventh grader Rose Macapinlac was running in a dead sprint towards the school’s athletic fields.
When she reached her goal, she turned around and ran back, then attacked an obstacle course that included a four-foot-tall wall she had to drag herself over, hurdles she was required to leap, orange cones she zig-zagged around and a low crawl she slithered through before reaching a 100-pound dummy she had to drag across the grass.
And, that only marked the halfway point of the modified Physical Abilities Test (PAT) that is required for Florida Department of Law Enforcement Capitol Police.
“Once they pull that dummy, that’s when the legs turn to jelly,” said April Heuss, the teacher of CCMH’s criminal justice program, which she says she believes is the first of its kind in the state of Florida.
After a school year of teaching students things like proper radio procedures, teamwork, leadership and the importance of law enforcement, Heuss wrapped up the school year by putting her classes through the arduous demands of a simulated PAT, which has to be passed by prospective law enforcement officers.
Students in her classes had to exit a vehicle (in this case a golf cart) with a flashlight in hand, run 220 yards, complete an obstacle course, drag the dummy, do the obstacle course again, run 220 yards, dry-fire a plastic gun six times with each hand, and call in their report.
While law enforcement applicants have to complete their course in 6 minutes, 4 seconds, Cypress Creek students were wrapping up their modified course (with a 100-pound dummy compared to the 150 pounder dragged by law enforcement) in 3:30-5 minutes.
“Getting over the wall with a flashlight in my hands was the hardest,” said Rose. “My legs hurt.”
Gabriel Linck was the fastest boy on the day, with a time of 3:35, running it twice with plans to do it again.
Anna Ritchie was the fastest girl, finishing in 4:03.
“They are all wanting to see who got the best time, who is going to win,” Heuss said. “This was supposed to be a one-day thing but the kids were so stoked and excited about it we decided to keep doing it for three days. They love it.”
A rendering of the new outpatient center for cancer patients is to the right of the main AdventHealth Wesley Chapel hospital (while the existing AHWC Wellness Plaza is to the left). (Rendering courtesy of AdventHealth Wesley Chapel)
Plans to expand the services at AdventHealth Wesley Chapel (AHWC) have been in the works for more than a year, but for hospital president and CEO Denyse Bales-Chubb, the most important thing was finding the right partner.
She is convinced the hospital has done just that.
On May 21, AHWC and the Moffitt Cancer Center officially broke ground on a new outpatient center to serve cancer patients as part of a new medical office building on the AHWC campus.
The new medical office will be the bookend on the south side of the hospital along Bruce B. Downs Blvd., with the similarily-sized, existing Wellness Plaza on the north side.
AHWC president and CEO Denyse Bales-Chubb
“We believe that the community here in Wesley Chapel is in need of having some cancer specialists they would be able to access, so it was natural we would go and talk to Moffitt,” Bales-Chubb said at the packed groundbreaking event. “They have the expertise, the awards and the skills we are looking for in our community.”
According to Bales-Chubb, the second medical office on the hospital’s campus also is necessary because the first one is full and cannot add anymore physicians. One of the pressing needs AHWC was looking to fill was cancer treatment. “It’s a natural fit,” she said.
The groundbreaking for the three-story, 100,000-sq.-ft. medical building was attended by more than 100 community members, local leaders and officials from AHWC and Moffitt. It was heralded as a breakthrough moment for medical service in Pasco County.
Nearly a third of that space will be used for the cancer outpatient center. AHWC’s own spine institute, which has outgrown its current space in the Wellness Plaza, also is moving the services moving into the new building.
A close-up artist’s rendering of the new medical building at AdventHealth Wesley Chapel.
The rest of the space will be used for other services and Bales-Chubb hinted that more partnerships could be on the way.
“The best interest of the patient is the only interest to be considered and, in order that the sick may have the benefit of advancing knowledge, a union of forces is necessary,” said Dominic Sarafin, the vice president of strategic alliances and network for Moffitt, quoting something Dr. William J. Mayo, M.D. (founder of the original Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN) said in 1910. “It is a sentiment we share today.”
The outpatient center will offer medical and radiation oncology services and will be designed to accommodate oncologists to deliver chemotherapy, immunotherapy and radiation therapy to patients, said Dr. Lewis Harrison, chair & senior member of radiation oncology at the Moffitt Cancer Center.
Dr. Harrison also said the center at AHWC will have 20 examination rooms, 22 infusion suites and will accommodate two linear accelerators —which customizes the radiation treatment to focus on the tumor or cancer cells without damaging surrounding tissue — for radiation therapy services.
Full-length glass will provide patients the opportunity to look outside and see trees and nature, contributing to the overall patient experience.
The new $44-million facility also will offer cancer screenings and survivorship programs for post-treatment patients.
The building is expected to be completed by the fall of 2020.
A Little History…
The H. Lee Moffitt Cancer & Research Institute was founded as the state’s cancer center when it opened on the campus of the University of South Florida in Tampa in 1986. As one of only 50 National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers, Moffitt has gained national acclaim over the years for its research and patient care.
“The mission has remained the same — to contribute to the prevention and cure of cancer,” said Sarafin. “It drives everything and everyone at Moffitt. As the state grows and ages, the ACA estimates more than 130,000 (Floridians)…. will learn they have cancer this year. We are joining with AdventHealth, in the hopes that this project will make a difference in their lives.”
Bales-Chubb also noted that it is a big step for Moffitt to be able to bring its renowned cancer treatments and access to clinical trials closer to patients in our area who need it.
“To me, it says they want to make sure they are taking care of the community,” she said. “Instead of just saying you come to us, it’s more of we are going to come to you…we want to bring our services to you, where you live and where you work.”
AHWC, formerly Florida Hospital Wesley Chapel, opened in 2012 as Wesley Chapel’s first hospital, and in 2016, doubled its emergency department from 18 to 35 rooms and went from 83 private patient rooms to 143 while adding three floors and 111,993 sq. ft. of new space during a $78-million expansion.
Residents of Northwood, long-frustrated over the Northwood Palms Blvd. that cuts through their community and has been serving as a through-road from County Line Rd. to S.R. 56, now have an even bigger reason to be flustered by the road— it is closed, sending that same traffic through their neighborhoods.
Due to the emergency repair of a sewer main along the Northwood Palms Blvd., residents and other commuters must now use Breakers Dr. to get from County Line Rd. to S.R. 56.
While Northwood Palms Blvd. runs past the community’s subdivisions, Breakers Dr. passes right through those neighborhoods and much closer to homes, on a road often used by those casually walking their dogs and riding their bikes.
What was once a few dozen cars driven by residents leaving and returning to their homes on Breakers Dr. has become hundreds of travelers trying to cut through and avoid traffic both on Bruce B. Downs (BBD) Blvd. and the S.R. 56 and I-75 intersection.
“It is truly a nightmare,” says Steve Miller, a resident of the Carlyle subdivision.
NOTE: Since this article was printed, Pasco County announced that Breakers Dr. would be closed to thru traffic beginning May 29. Drivers will have to use additional detours on SR 56, Bruce B. Downs Blvd. and County Line Road.
Residents at the Northwood CDD meeting on May 13 were able to meet with county officials, including director of operations and maintenance Jason Mickel, with most of their questions centering around concerns about the additional traffic through their neighborhoods, especially where buses pick up and drop off children.
Only one of the questions at the meeting was actually related to the actual utility work, Mickel says.
“They are definitely frustrated,” he said. “We detoured the traffic, and cars are driving through Breakers Dr. and the residents are really frustrated with that. We are doing everything we can to move this project along as quickly as possible.”
The $3-million project, however, is a large one, and will take at least four months of utility workers putting in 12-hour days to complete it.
Mickel says during routine maintenance of the sewer lines, some problems were discovered with the ductile iron pipes (DIP), which weren’t properly coated when they were installed.
“Esssentially, the integrity of the pipe was compromised,” he said. “We got a lot of infiltration into the pipes from ground water, gravel and sand from the road beds. It gets in the pipes and moves along and scours the pipe. It was in pretty bad condition.”
Mickel got approval for the emergency work, and he hopes the 12-hour shifts will expedite the repairs. The sewer line has been re-routed, so residents will not be affected as 3,000 feet of pipe is re-lined.
“But, we’re going to be there for a while,” Mickel says.
Resident Jen Lavelle, who also lives in Carlyle, said she felt a little better after attending the CDD meeting and hearing from Mickel. But, she is concerned the repairs won’t be completed for four months.
She says she also is concerned that the repairs are taking place over the summer, when kids will be home from school and outside biking and playing in their neighborhoods even more than usual.
“A lot of parents won’t let them go outside and ride their bikes,” Lavelle says.
Parents are doing what they can to slow the additional traffic down. Some cars have driven around school buses loading and unloading children, ignoring the flashing arm with the stop sign on it.
Some have gathered to lock arms and form a human barricade behind the school bus, to assure no cars try to pass.
While there are signs telling drivers that no through traffic is allowed, Lavelle thinks only 10 percent of vehicles actually heed the warning. In order to combat speeders, she says many residents have banded together to drive well below the 30 mile per hour speed limit, slowing down the vehicles behind them.
Josue Marquez, the Northwood on-site property manager, says residents are frustrated with the traffic as a result of the repairs, but adds that Northwood Palms Blvd. has long been a point of contention for those in the community.
“We get a lot of heavy trucks, construction trucks passing through, and we get a lot of speeders going like 50-60 miles per hour because it’s faster than Bruce B. Downs,” Marquez says.
Although the Northwood entrance off County Line Rd. has a guard house, it has never had a gate or been restricted.
But, when it began development in 1985, the area around Northwood was still relatively sparse when it came to businesses and homes.
During Wesley Chapel’s growth boom since then, the traffic in the area has increased.
“When they built it, everyone was used to this place being a private community, but it has basically turned into a freeway everyone uses to get around,” Marquez said. “None of the residents are happy with it.”
Now that the same traffic is being detoured through a smaller road lined with homes and occupied by families with children, that unhappiness has grown.
Lavelle said her 13-year-old son can’t even cross the street at times, waiting five minutes for a car to stop and allow him. She said her 3-year-old recently got a tricycle, but they can’t take the risk of letting her ride it in the driveway.
Miller says that when Northwood Palms Blvd. opened all the way to S.R. 56, he saw that as a major benefit for residents who needed access to the interstate. And while the increased traffic was worrisome, it wasn’t affecting the roads through the subdivisions.
Until now.
“I think we’ve gone from 50 cars a day to 8,000 cars,” Miller said. “We now get everything from Coca-Cola trucks to car carriers to moving companies, right down Breakers Drive, breaking off tree limbs.”
Miller said his wife used to run on the road in the morning, but it’s gotten too dangerous.
“And walking your dogs is a nightmare,” he added.
Miller and Lavelle both says residents have contacted the county, as well as Kathyrn Starkey, the commisioner who represents their area, about a solution to limit the traffic on Breakers Dr..
A popular suggestion is to shut Northwood Palms Blvd. down at the northernmost roundabout. That would prevent anyone from using Breakers Dr. as a through-road to S.R. 56 to turn back around and exit back onto County Line Rd.
Anyone entering from S.R. 56 would reach the same roundabout and have to turn back as well.
Lavelle says she is on the board of the Northwood Homeowners Association, and says the association has contacted Google Maps and Apple Maps so that when people use their apps for directions, Northwood Palms Blvd. isn’t an option for the next four months.
“We just have to hope it’s only four months,” Lavelle says.
The price simply wasn’t right for the developers Bill Place chose to buy and turn the Pebble Creek Golf Club (PCGC) into new homes, so the PCGC owner is turning to a new development group.
13th Floor Homes, a Miami-based investment management firm, was chosen late last year from a group of bidders interested in razing New Tampa’s oldest golf course in favor of a new housing development. Following months of inspections and meetings with homeowners, 13th Floor has withdrawn its interest.
“They got to end of the inspection period and wanted to change a lot of the terms,” says Place. “We didn’t want to change the terms.”
Place and his wife Su Lee own Ace Golf, which bought PCGC in 2005.
While the exit of 13th Floor from the process was a disappointment for Place, he said there were seven developers that had originally submitted bids to purchase the 6,436-yard golf course, which opened in 1967. So, it’s on to the next group of potential suitors, which Place would only describe as “major homebuilders.”
Despite the lack of a sale to 13th Floor, he says the months of examination and feedback have helped guide what will be acceptable in the future.
Place also said that while the zoning exists to build 600 homes on the 149 acres he is selling, he wouldn’t even consider allowing that much development.
And, according to what he learned from focus groups organized by Pebble Creek’s two homeowners associations, there also is opposition to multi-family units and homes being built in close proximity to existing homes in the community.
“We’ve excluded all that from this next round,” Place says. “We’ll tell the next developer that these are things that have already been worked on with the homeowners and that we don’t want to backtrack.”
Place said that he didn’t originally choose the highest bidder because they wanted to come in and build rental homes. “We don’t feel that would be appropriate for the community,” he says.
Although there is a large contingent of residents opposed to the sale of the golf club (and what they fear will be a resulting loss of wildlife and green space) for any reason, the inspection period, which included lots of meetings with Pebble Creek’s HOAs and focus groups, was not acrimonious.
“Not at all, surprisingly so,” said 13th Floor corporate counsel Dan Daley. “The community, particularly the HOA members and leadership, understood the reality of the situation.”
Mulligan’s Pub
That reality, Place says, is that the golf course is losing money — he has said that 2018 revenues were down 33 percent, and profits were down 50 percent — as the golf course industry struggles nationwide.
The club currently has only 20 members, and competition is stiff. In New Tampa alone, Pebble Creek has to compete with private country clubs at Hunter’s Green and Tampa Palms, as well the recently revamped Heritage Isles on Cross Creek Blvd.
Place even said that since Ace Golf bought Plantation Palms Golf Club — which had been closed for two years and is located only 10 miles from PCGC (in Land O’Lakes) — in 2015, with the hopes of reviving it, Plantation Palms also has drawn additional business away from Pebble Creek.
While the sale of PCGC remains imminent, Place says that it currently is still business as usual. Mulligan’s Pub continues to be a popular hangout, and the club itself is booking weddings and other events through the end of next year.
“It’s physically impossible to get through the zoning and public input before then,” he says, “so we are still booking events through 2020. The one thing I have refused to do is operate like a business that is going out of business.”
Nupur Lala bought some time by asking for it to be used in a sentence. A hint of a smile crossed her bespectacled face. Inside, she was bursting.
Meena Lala watched her 14-year-old daughter intently. There had been one scare during the Scripps National Spelling Bee, but that was a few rounds back, on the word “poimenics,” maybe the only time she had gotten nervous.
But not now. Not on this word.
“L-O-G…”
Odalys Pritchard remembers the moment like it was yesterday. She was on the edge of her seat, watching her Benito Middle School eighth grader on ESPN trying to spell her way into history.
“I remember seeing the smile and the confidence when they gave her the word,” Pritchard says. “I knew she knew it.”
“…O-R-R…”
Right before she was given the final word, Nupur caught a glimpse of the event organizers preparing the trophy for the winner.
“It felt like a dream,” she says, and she wasted no time, quickly spelling the winning word.
“…H-E-A!”
When Nupur nailed the final word at the 76th annual Scripps National Spelling Bee on June 3, 1999, she jumped as high as she could two times, stopped to tuck her shoulder-length hair behind each ear, and jumped again, her yellow placard designating her as Speller No. 165 flailing about with her arms.
She grabbed the big trophy, raised it up to the sky and smiled the widest of smiles.
“It didn’t feel real,” says Nupur, now age 34. “I remember jumping up and down, and wondering ‘Is there going to be ground beneath me when I land?’”
***
Twenty years later, she remembers every detail, from the hero’s greeting she received at Tampa International Airport to receiving a key to the city to a slew of television cameras eager to record her every move.
There were banners declaring “Busch Gardens Spells Champ N-U-P-U-R” and local daily newspaper headlines calling her “The goddess of spelling.” The Neighborhood News (see pg. 36) called her “Super Nupur.”
New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner invited her to New York and gave her tickets to see “Phantom” on Broadway. Even Hooters put up a sign congratulating Nupur.
Her parents, Meena and Nupur’s father Parag, had her write the restaurant a thank-you letter.
“In hindsight, thinking back, it was extraordinary,” she says. “I’ll never forget the way that Tampa treated me.”
Nupur is greeted at Busch Gardens after her win.
However, when she felt the most famous, she says, is when her mother was driving her home to Hunter’s Green one day, and the guard at the gate asked if that was the Spelling Bee champ in the back seat.
Meena said yes, and he asked if she could hop out and say hi. This was a time before cell phones, so he didn’t want a picture. He just wanted to congratulate her and share his admiration for her accomplishment.
“That might have been the moment I felt really famous,” Nupur says.
***
It was just the beginning, though. In 2002, the documentary “Spellbound” was released, to critical acclaim. It followed Nupur and seven other Regional champions through the 1999 Scripps Spelling Bee competition. It earned $6-million and was nominated for an Oscar, giving Nupur a second round of fame.
She never thought she would always be the Spelling Bee champ from Benito Middle School in Tampa.
“I’d say it’s the one accomplishment in my life people are still interested in,” she says. “It has stayed with me more than anything I’ve done.”
There were times, she says, that fact chafed Nupur. To be defined by something you did at age 14, when you barely knew then who you even were, and then to have so much more expected of you as a result, was frustrating at times.
“I’ve had different feelings at different points in my life about all of it,” Nupur says. “Definitely early high school, early college, I felt that there were such massive expectations from winning the Spelling Bee at 14. I was still trying to figure out who I was and where I wanted to fit in in the world. It was very difficult.”
Today, however, Nupur has found her path. As a result, it is easier to embrace being noticed by someone who recognizes her name or face.
***
Nupur attended high school in Fayetteville, AR, where her family had moved just a few months after the Spelling Bee victory. She graduated from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 2007 with a B.S. degree in Brain Cognitive and Behavioral Science, and worked for three years at the Massachusetts Institute of technology (MIT) in Cambridge doing functional MRI research in cognitive neuroscience
She graduated with a Master’s degree in Cancer Biology from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in 2015. And, after earning her Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock, she is now doing her residency in Neurology at the Rhode Island Hospital in Providence.
She hopes to do a fellowship in neuro-oncology, specifically Glioblastoma multiforme, the brain cancer that killed U.S. Senator John McCain.
***
Millions of students from all 50 states battle each year to make it to The Scripps National Spelling Bee, scheduled this year for Sunday-Friday, May 26-31, in Washington, D.C.
A Benito newsletter recognized Nupur, as well as her stiffest competition.
Nupur remembers the grind. She did her first spelling bee in Kaye Whitehurst’s seventh grade English class, merely to earn extra credit. She hadn’t even heard of the Scripps Spelling Bee, but once she discovered she was good at it, winning it became a goal.
Few remember that she actually made it to our nation’s capital for the first time as a seventh grader, when she was eliminated in the third round on the first day in 1998.
She was happy and proud, but she remembers while she was almost universally praised for her efforts, a classmate taunted her by reminding her that she didn’t win.
“I still remember that feeling. One moment you can be on top, and the next moment, you’re back to being a regular kid,” she says. “I didn’t realize how much it bothered me or how much I internalized that feeling. It fueled me for years.”
Nupur says it was Whitehurst, who had gone to D.C. with her student in 1998, and Pritchard, who is now interim deputy director for Hillsborough County’s Achievement Schools, that helped lift up her spirits.
“Teachers don’t even know the impact they make,” Nupur says. “I hope they read this and know they made a tremendous difference.”
***
With Meena (who spent many hours reading the practice words to her daughter), Whitehurst and Pritchard in her corner, Nupur was determined to get back to the National Spelling Bee in the eighth grade, and her goal was to make it to the televised portion of the event. She competed in a half dozen regional events to qualify, but says the stiffest competition was actually at Benito.
There were 249 competitors from around the country who survived Regionals and made it to Washington and 144 of them were eliminated on the first day.
But, not Nupur. She had made it to the televised portion on Day 2, and when she did, she says a strange calm came over her.
“I met my goal,” she remembers thinking. “It was still the most surreal moment of my life.”
Nupur’s parents moved to the U.S. from a small town in central India in 1984, where Parag worked as an engineering professor at Syracuse University in upstate New York, where Nupur was born. They moved to Tampa in 1997.
Nupur’s win marked a historic shift in the Spelling Bee. Since her win, 19 spellers of Indian descent have either been champion or co-champion.
Since her win, Nupur says she did not watch the Spelling Bee every year. She confesses to a rebellious period where she didn’t want to be the “goddess of spelling” anymore.
But, when she does watch it, she says she finds herself moved by the reactions of the winners, as well as her own memories.
“It was the culmination of a lot of hard work, by me and my family,” Nupur says. “I did something very few people have, and I will forever be grateful for that moment.”
So will those who knew her, like Pritchard. Nupur’s picture commemorating her win still hangs in the front office at Benito. And, for a long time, there was a large photo portrait of Nupur displayed at the Hillsborough County School Board boardroom auditorium, until the boardroom was renovated in 2017.
“It was always nice seeing that picture,” Pritchard says. “I can’t believe it’s been 20 years. Nupur was a shining star. There’s probably a lot of people who remember her vividly.”
