The latest addition to the Wesley Chapel District Park on Boyette Rd. in Wesley Chapel is a street hockey rink, which New Tampa resident Joe Rao drove up to try out one day recently. The rink, part of a partnership between the Tampa Bay Lighting and Pasco County, will host leagues this spring, whenever Covid-19 allows. (Photos: Charmaine George)
The Wesley Chapel District Park (WCDP) on Boyette Rd. may not be as large as the Wiregrass Ranch Sports Campus a few miles to its south (see pgs. 8-10), but its own little mini-sports campus is rounding into shape nicely.
The latest addition is a new Tampa Bay Lightning-sponsored street, or ball, hockey rink, which officially opened a few days before Christmas. It was constructed just a few steps away from WCDP’s new 17,800-sq.-ft. indoor basketball facility, which broke ground in July and is expected to open by late summer 2021.
“It’s nice to see the park growing and offering more and more opportunities for kids to play different sports,” said District 2 commissioner Mike Moore, who has coached a variety of youth teams at WCDP, but the only basketball and volleyball offered at the park has previously been only outdoors.
In a public-private partnership between the Stanley Cup champion Lighting and Pasco County, two street hockey rinks were built in Pasco — one in Holiday, at the J. Ben Harrill Recreation Center, and the other at WCDP.
The virtually-held ribbon-cutting ceremony for the rinks were held in Holiday and were attended by Tampa Bay Lightning CEO Steve Griggs, former Lightning general manager and 2004 Stanley Cup Champion Jay Feaster, former Lightning defenseman Jassen Cullimore and Stanley Cup captain Dave Andreychuk.
“We are very proud to open these two rinks today as part of our pledge to build 10 ball hockey rinks across the Tampa Bay area,” said Griggs. “These two rinks that we opened will give local youth the opportunity to get outside and play the great game of hockey. The Lightning would like to thank Pasco County for their enthusiasm and support in helping us make this a reality for everyone in Pasco County.”
The other rinks the Lightning have opened in the Tampa Bay area are in Hillsborough, Manatee, Pinellas and Polk counties. They are of the Lightning’s Build The Thunder 2.0 and Connect the Thunder outreach programs. In 2015, through the National Hockey League (NHL) and National Hockey League Players Association (NHLPA) Industry Growth Fund, the Lightning announced a $6 million grass roots hockey development initiative to be delivered to young people throughout the Bay area.
The NHL club finalized its agreement to build the two rinks in Pasco County last January.
Wesley Chapel already has the popular AdventHealth Center Ice — the largest indoor ice skating/hockey facility south of New York in the United States — so Pasco County was an ideal location, says Josh Dreith, the Lightning’s community manager.
“I love Pasco County,” he said. “There is a ton of Lightning fans in Pasco, and a ton of engaged kids as well.”
The county supplied the land and built the pads the rink is built on, and the Lightning built the actual rink, which is 120 feet long by 60 feet wide, has a full dasher-board system and a scoreboard. The Lightning also is providing the equipment, and will host a series of clinics to get the program going.
The county and Lightning will then coordinate actual league play, which could begin as early as March 2021, but will be dictated by Covid-19 conditions. The rink also will offer plenty of free play time to the public.
For more information, visit LightningMadeHockey.com.
Club volleyball has been keeping the January calendar full at the Wiregrass Ranch Sports Campus of Pasco County.
If tourism is going to bounce back from the Covid-19-ravaged 2020, a series of spikes, dunks, cheers and racquet sports will have a lot to do with it.
At least that’s how it looks to Pasco County tourism director Adam Thomas, who says that after a tough year for tourism around the world, events are returning to Pasco’s “sports tourism” sites, including the Wiregrass Ranch Sports Campus, Advent Health Center Ice and the Sarah Vande Berg (SVB) Tennis Center — all part of the county’s “Florida’s Sports Coast” branding.
Thomas says the three facilities have 14 events scheduled for the first two months of the year, with many more to come, as national governing bodies like USA Volleyball, USA Wrestling, USA Powerlifting and others look to take advantage of Florida’s open-for-business status and have eyed the Wesley Chapel-area to hold events.
“We are just now getting back to normalcy,” Thomas says, despite rising Covid numbers in Pasco, in Florida and around the nation. “We are looking at sports tourism in 2021 to really get us back to where we need to be.”
One event that won’t provide as much help as originally expected is Super Bowl LV, which is being played at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa on February 7. Generally, a huge event like the Super Bowl would have a major economic impact on nearby Wesley Chapel, with visitors staying in local hotels and eating and shopping at local restaurants and stores.
But, Covid-19 protocols will limit the crowd at Raymond James Stadium, which can hold 65,890 fans, to roughly 20,000 for the Big Game.
Thomas thinks Wesley Chapel will still enjoy some benefit from the Super Bowl, but in October, Pasco backed out of plans to spend $250,000 on a Super Bowl sponsorship and instead use that money for something more likely to bring a bigger return to the county.
So, while the Big Game won’t make as much of an impact, hundreds of little ones will — and that’s fine with Richard Blalock, the CEO of RADDSports, which runs the Wiregrass Ranch Sports Campus, thanks to a public-private partnership between Pasco and RADD Sports.
The 98,000-sq.ft. AdventHealth Sports Arena will host a variety of club sporting events in 2021, bringing hundreds of teams and players and their parents’ wallets to Wesley Chapel.
The January calendar was filled with volleyball tournaments and gymnastics meets. Volleyball and gymnastics club seasons will roll into a basketball club season in the spring, and then the camp season over the summer. The Sports Campus is already proving to be responsible for a lot of hotel room nights and money spent at Wesley Chapel restaurants, malls and shopping centers, as nearly every weekend is booked through August and even Covid-plagued 2020 proved to be a success.
“We are not one-sport-specific, and that helps us,” Blalock says. “We made that decision by design. We can run a multitude of events here. As one season ends, another is starting.”
Blalock says in August and September of 2020, the first six weeks the Sports Campus was open, its events were responsible for 1,800 hotel room nights and just over $150,000 in sales, resulting in a $1.2-million indirect impact on the local economy.
He doesn’t have numbers yet for the rest of 2020, but Blalock says he expects to exceed those numbers in 2021. He says this while staring out his office window at construction workers laying masonry blocks on the fourth floor of the Residence Inn by Marriott hotel, which is being built adjacent to the arena on the Spots Campus site and is expected to open around the first week in August.
But, 2021 also is planned to include an NFL-style combine for pro football hopefuls, organized by former Tampa Bay Buccaneers wide receiver Yo Murphy, as well as the possibility of European soccer teams camping here prior to their fall 2021 seasons.
Hockey Tourism, Too
Thomas says the Sports Campus isn’t the only local venue to have a slew of events booked to meet pent up demand. AHCI currently is hosting a six-week United States Premier Hockey League (USPHL) camp — a college and pro showcase with hundreds of players staying at Saddlebrook Resort and playing games at AHCI — as well as in Ellenton and Brandon.
The USPHL’s Hub City concept is designed in part to make up for the loss of games and exposure events for players last year, especially from hockey areas hit particularly hard by Covid-19, like the northeastern U.S.
Because so many events were cancelled last year and so many seasons went unfinished, Thomas anticipates eager event organizers to be heading our way.
“Our event calendar looks pretty promising,” he says.
The SVB Tennis Center in Zephyrhills is attracting sports tourism with growing sports like padel (photo) and pickleball.
The county won’t recover in one year, Thomas adds. He believes the Covid-19 vaccine will help make people more comfortable when it comes to travel and attending larger events, but that change will take a while. While 2021 is expected to put the Florida Sports Coast back on track, Thomas says the tourism industry is looking at 2023 before a full recovery can probably be expected.
“It’s going to take some time,” he says. “We’re still licking our wounds.”
When the pandemic hit last year, the county was coming off a record-setting February. March began the nosedive, and when the state was shut down for much of April, the county saw its tourist tax revenue drop to below $100,000 for the month, down from $430,000 in tourist tax collected in April 2019.
There is some good news, even if it is anecdotal — Thomas says the last weekend of 2020 saw 6.2 -percent growth, with almost 40 percent hotel occupancy. “We had a really good week,” he says. “Hopefully we’ll continue to see that.”
In fact, Lisa Moore, the market director of sales for the Hilton Garden Inn Tampa-Wesley Chapel on S.R. 56 says, “We’ve been at or near 100% occupancy every weekend since the Sports Campus opened. It (2020) was a tough year, but things are looking better now.”
The Wiregrass Ranch Sports Campus of Pasco County is doing more than just helping drive sports tourism in Pasco. It is providing a unique venue for locals, both children and adults, to enjoy a variety of indoor and outdoor sports. On Jan. 3, the Sports Campus hosted a Community Open House inside the AdventHealth Sports Arena, which introduced mask-wearing, socially distant locals to these programs. And yes, it was a great success.
“We signed up more than 40 new people, mostly kids, from the event,” says RADDSports director of marketing Jannah Nager. “The event also introduced people who attended to our Sports Campus sponsors.”
RADD Sports is the private company providing the programs and managing the Sports Campus through a public-private partnership between RADD and the county. RADD Sports founder and CEO Richard Blalock says that although the Sports Campus is already proving to be popular for both locals and competitive tournaments in the “core” sports being offered — basketball, volleyball, cheerleading and soccer (both in and outside of the AdventHealth Sports Arena) — “Events like the Open House allow more local residents the opportunity to check us out and see everything we have to offer.”
Avery Walker began last school year as the head coach for the Wiregrass Ranch High (WRH) boys soccer junior varsity team, and finished it as the coach of two teams when he stepped in and took over the girls varsity soccer team midway through the season.
But, when it came to choosing which squad to coach this season, it was an easy call for Walker.
“The girls won me over,” he says.
Walker split the girls duties last year with boys varsity coach Dave Smith after Edwin Acosta resigned for personal reasons following a 6-1-1 start. Walker remembers his first game against River Ridge, when he had former player Ysa Novak make out the lineup. Walker jokes that he just kind of watched as he became familiar with his new players.
The Bulls won that game 4-3, and then won the next 13, including the Class 6A, District 5 championship and a first-round Regional playoff game before falling to St. Petersburg on penalty kicks.
Overall, not a bad debut. And the girls, who finished with a school-record 19-2-1 record last season, were happy to welcome him back.
“It was definitely a shock in the beginning (when Costa resigned),” says junior co-captain Kayla Ojeda. “But, I felt like we adjusted really well. Coach Walker came in and did a great job coaching us and helping us make it to Regionals. I was hoping he would sign up for the job and was really excited when he got it.”
Ojeda, a defender, is one of the keys if the Bulls are going to repeat the success of last season. While the team loses its top two scorers in Avery Damjanovic (34 goals, 11 assists) and Kylee Ehmann (12 goals, 20 assists), Ojeda heads up a defense that is stout. Walker, who played defense in college at Division III Bridgewater College in Virginia, loves what he sees.
Freshman Lola Vargas, sophomore Ashtyn Warner and seniors Taylor Pryor and Savannah Yoder comprise a group that Walker says is “extremely” good. If you happen to sneak by the Wiregrass wall, then co-captain and starting keeper Ella McGahey will be waiting.
“I think our backline is going to be really solid this year and, as a goalkeeper, it’s something you always want to have confidence in,” McGahey says. “Our goal is to concede fewer than 10 goals this season.”
That would appear to be a reasonable goal, since the Bulls allowed only 12 last year, as McGahey set a school record by allowing just 0.372 goals per game. The Bulls are 3-0-1 so far this season and haven’t allowed a goal.
Offensively, Walker feels he can fill the holes with junior midfielders Ellie Klem, who missed last season with an injury, and Natalia Kaminski, a newcomer.
The Bulls also return junior forwards Rylee Humphries, the leading returning scorer with 11 goals and nine assists, and Aiya Harrell (eight goals last season). Junior McKayla Battle scored six goals last year and picked up four in an 8-0 win over Anclote, and sophomore Emily Erker scored the only goals in 1-0 wins this season over Mitchell (which is now coached by Costa) is the season opener and their last game against Berkeley Prep.
Newcomer Bella Maldonado, who scored twice in the win over Anclote, also is expected to make an impact at midfield this season as well.
After back-to-back 19-win seasons, the sky may be the limit for the Bulls in 2020-21. Always in the shadow of a boys soccer program that is regarded as a state title contender every year, the girls look ready to step out this season.
“I definitely think we’re making a name for ourselves,” Ojeda says. “I think we’re going to keep it going this year.”
Cypress Creek High girls soccer coach Jessica Herzek is high on her freshmen and sophomores this season, and why not? Allison Souers, one of those freshmen Herzek is happy about, scored five goals in her first-ever high school game, an 11-0 season-opening win over South Sumter.
The still-young Coyotes, coming off a 9-7-1 season, have only one senior on their roster.
Youngsters like junior Hailey Canady (two goals in the season-opening win), sophomore Hannah Fulpo (a goal and two assists) and sophomore keeper Alex Capocy (1.16 goals-against-average) will lead the way.
“I have numerous girls who, if they choose, could go on to play at the collegiate level,” Herzek says. “I feel this will be an amazing season, but the next few years will get better and better.”
The Coyotes are 1-0-1, with a 2-2 tie against rival Wesley Chapel.
Since taking over in 2017, Wesley Chapel High coach Mark Leonard has set a school record for wins every year, including last year’s 20-4 mark, and won three straight District 4A-6 titles.
Keeping that going will be the goal for this season, though the Wildcats were outscored 22-1 in their first three games before earning a draw with the Coyotes.
Leonard says returning seniors Sydney Bauer, Kaylei Koschman (11 goals last year) and keeper Madison Holcombe, as well as junior Maddy Golka (nine goals) comprise the team’s core, and he expects newcomer Tatum Moore and sophomores Kiera McFeron and Kacey Snead to have breakout seasons on offense.
Tyriq Outen honed his hockey skills while living in New Tampa, and is riding high after an MVP performance in a major invitational tournament this summer has him a little closer to his dream of playing goalie in the NHL. (Photo courtesy of the Outen family).
The first time Tyriq Outen skated on ice at the Brandon’s Ice Sports Forum, he was 4 years old and decided immediately he wanted to be a goalie.
A few weeks later, during his first lesson, his promising ice hockey career began…with his pads on backwards.
“Then, he fell behind the net and got his helmet caught in the net,” recalls his father, Ronnie. “It was a comedy of errors.”
That imperfect start, however, soon gave way to success at nearly every level at which “Ty,” as his family calls him, has played since. He went from being entangled in the nets to starring in them, and from being a junior standout to a legitimate NHL draft prospect with a bright future ahead of him.
“I feel like this is where I belong,” he says. “I fell in love with it right away.”
Tyriq grew up in New Tampa, and attended Turner Bartels Middle School. While his friends played Little League baseball and basketball and soccer at the New Tampa YMCA, Tyriq was part of a small but budding hockey community.
He played for one of the best youth hockey teams in Florida, comprised of players from all over the state, but that meant lots of travel. He traveled by plane 2-3 times a month for big tournaments in the northeast and Canada, but mostly spent lots of time in the car with Ronnie driving all over the southeast.
Ronnie, the basketball director at the new Wiregrass Ranch Sports Campus of Pasco County, understood the lifestyle and demands for a high-caliber youth athlete. A former college basketball player who played professionally overseas, Ronnie understood it was all about exposure and training. When it was time to choose a high school, Ronnie and Tyriq moved to hockey-hotbed Boston and lived in an apartment.
“When we were in Boston, he was literally on the ice 5-6 days a week,” he says. “No knock on Florida, but there was a rink in every neighborhood. Imagine if Hunter’s Green had one, and Arbor Greene and Live Oak had one, if you had 5-6 rinks in this area, think of the pool of talent you’d have to draw from. That’s how it is up there. That is why the competition was so good.”
First Stop – Foxboro
Tyriq hooked up with the South Shore Kings in Foxboro, MA, and began to take off as a player. He had a 3.08 goals-against average (GAA) and a 90% save percentage in his two seasons.
At the age of 17, Tyriq made it onto the coveted NHL Central Scouting list as No. 19 among all North American goalie prospects. His athleticism, Ronnie says, is off the charts — he can roll out of bed and dunk a basketball — and his skating and stick skills are exceptional. Tyriq’s vision and game management continue to improve.
Toronto Maple Leafs development camp, June 30, 2018. Mark Blinch/Toronto Maple Leafs
Once a growth spurt got him to 6-feet, 3-inches, it completed the package, making him an enticing prospect at a position where taller, athletic goaltenders — like the Tampa Bay Lightning’s Andre Vasilevskiy, who also is 6’-3” —seem to be the future.
In Boston, NHL scouts were watching every game. “It definitely got the heart pumping,” Tyriq says.
Although Ronnie had spent most of his life playing and coaching basketball, he had married Heather, a native Canadian, who came from a family of goalies.
Tyriq was born in Miramichi, New Brunswick, where his grandfather Hugh Moar — Tyriq called him Grampy — was in the town’s Hall of Fame and his uncles were accomplished junior goaltenders.
Ronnie jokes that basketball never had a chance. Which, he adds, was fine by him.
“It wasn’t a disappointment at all,” he says. “I didn’t want him growing up with anyone comparing him to me or anything like that. I was just happy that every time he came off the ice, whether after practice or a game, he had a smile, and five minutes into the drive home, he wanted to talk about the game.”
Dealing With Adversity
After graduating high school in Boston, Tyriq had to choose between pursuing a Division I college career, or signing with a major junior hockey team, which would end his amateur status.
Tyriq with “Grampy”, Hugh Moar.
With a chance to sign with the Acadie-Bathurst Titan of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League (QMJHL), the former team of NHL stars like Mario Lemieux, Mike Bossy and Roberto Luongo, and just an hour north from his birthplace, where his goalkeeping family had built a following, how could he resist?
It turned out to be the first speed bump in Tyriq’s career.
The QMJHL is one of three major junior ice hockey leagues that make up the Canadian Hockey League, along with the Ontario Hockey League (OHL) and Western Hockey League (WHL). Acadie-Bathurst had loaded up the previous season to win the QMJHL President’s Cup, and they captured the Memorial Cup against the winners from the OHL and WHL.
Tyriq says many of the players acquired to win the title in 2017-18 departed after that season. His new team won just eight games in 2018-19, and he finished with an 0-20 record, a 5.89 goals against average and faced nearly 1,000 shots in only 1,364 minutes. After a coaching change, Tyriq was released.
“The fact that it was (so close to Miramichi) made it even worse,” Ronnie says. “The whole town was hurrah hurrah, the hometown boy is coming, everybody was happy for that to happen. So, it made it double the monkey on his back.”
Ronnie worried about how Tyriq would handle his first-ever adversity. “I would be lying and he wouldn’t be human if I said it didn’t get him down.”
Ronnie says he reached out to Tampa Bay Lightning goalkeeping coach Frantz Jean for some guidance, concerned his son might retire his pads. Jean, however, reassured Ronnie that Tyriq was still highly regarded, and that NHL scouts will be watching to see how he reacted to his adversity.
“The ones that are successful come out the other side stronger,” Ronnie remembers being told.
Getting Back In The Pads
Tyriq got back to work. Determined to come back even stronger, rather than give up, he doubled down on his efforts. When he was tired, he thought about Bathurst. When he didn’t want to work out, he thought about Bathurst.
“I’m already up,” Tyriq would say as his dad walked into his room to wake him up early in the morning.
“That showed me just how tough he really is,” Ronnie says.
The Outen family — (l.-r) Tyriq, Kiana, Heather and Ronnie — has lived in Live Oak Preserve in New Tampa since 2006.Â
Tyriq’s bounceback started in Grand Falls, New Brunswick, in the Maritime Hockey League, a league below major junior. If playing near his hometown made the Bathurst experience more painful, then his first appearance at the Miramichi Civic Centre, against the hometown Timberwolves, offered some redemption — he stopped 34 of 35 shots in a 6-1 win.
He went on to beat the Timberwolves two more times at the Civic Centre, and stopped 145 of 156 shots the hometown team fired at him over five games.
Covid-19 ended the 2019-20 season early, so Tyriq returned to New Tampa. He worked out with the Lightning before the team entered the bubble en route to the Stanley Cup. Tyriq continued to grind, ready for his next challenge, which came when he was chosen to play at the prestigious invite-only Beantown Summer Classic in August in Exeter, NH, where NHL scouts handle the coaching duties.
“He was so proud of having some of the Lightning players’ phone numbers in his phone,” Ronnie says. “That was pretty cool for him.”
The NextGen MVP!
Tyriq was the only goalie invited to play for an all-minority team — NextGen AAA Foundation, a nonprofit that offers mentoring to hockey programs in underserved communities.
NextGen, which is coached by NHL players Bryce Salvador and Mike Grier, steamrolled the competition at the annual Beantown Classic in Boston, and went undefeated to win the title. Tyriq was 4-0, and even added five assists — a shockingly high number for a goalie but a tribute to his stick skills — and was named the tournament’s MVP.
“That was a big deal for me,” Tyriq says. “I feel like I’m ready to do bigger things. It was a great experience.”
Tyriq can’t return to Canada right now due to Covid, but was approached by a Calgary Flames scout at the Beantown Classic, who hooked him up the Maine Nordiques of the North American Hockey League. He left New Tampa last month to begin training, and the season began earlier this month.
In three games so far with Maine, Tyriq is 2-1 with a 2.94 goals-against-average and a .924 percent save percentage.
“He was in a bad situation before, but he’s recalibrated now,” Ronnie says. “This is a good situation for him. It’s going to be a good year. He is totally happy — you can hear it in his voice. And, that’s the best thing.”
