Cypress Creek High Boys Basketball Will Have You Seeing Double
Twice!

If you’ve attended a Cypress Creek Middle High School boys basketball game this year, you might have thought you were seeing the same two players over and over and over again.

You’re not.

The Coyotes have not one, but two sets of identical twins this season on their varsity roster — juniors Tai-Sheim and Jai-Keem Anthony, and sophomores Jalen and Jehlani Warren.

Chemistry is the name of the game for both sets of brothers.

The Anthonys moved to the Wesley Chapel area from Atlanta as fifth graders, already in tune with each other on the basketball court. They began to develop roles when they came up to the Wesley Chapel High (WCH) junior varsity team as sophomores a year ago, Tai-Sheim as a guard/forward, Jai-Keem as a point guard/shooting guard.

“I remember the first game (at WCH) last year, I scored 19,” Jai-Keem said. “The next game, I scored 21 and it seemed to get easier from there.”

The brothers never have a problem finding each other on the court. “I know I can look up the court and he (Tai-Sheim) will be in the corner for the three,” Jai-Keem said. “It always easy for us to find each other on the court.”

Both players would like to be the Cypress Creek point guard,  but Tai-Sheim has accepted his role. “I’m fine with it (not being the point),” Tai-Sheim says. “He (Jai-Keem) is shorter, so coach put him at point. I just try to fit in wherever I play.”

The Warren twins aren’t playing together as Coyotes for the first time. Jehlani is the quarterback of the football team, while Jalen is one of the running backs and also played strong safety.

The two have a lengthy history on the courts, however, and sometimes Jehlani and Jalen have even had to face off as opponents in various leagues. “When we used to play together in rec leagues, they made us play on separate teams because we were so good together,” Jehlani says.

The Warren twins’ dad, Christopher, says that it wasn’t until their last year of AAU basketball that his twins were allowed to play on the same team together.

“They would take turns taking over games,” Christopher Warren said. “They pushed the offense along and were a good 1-2 punch.”

The Warrens grew up in Virginia Beach,  and only moved to the Wesley Chapel area last year. They, like the Anthonys, developed  into their respective roles playing in rec leagues and in middle school.

Jehlani was more of a shooting guard or small forward, and Jalen played a lot of point guard. He has since shifted to shooting guard and forward for the Coyotes, as Cypress Creek already has Jai-Keem and freshman Willie Ravenna, who can play point. But, Jalen still finds his brother when he needs to deliver a pass.

“When I’m dribbling in, he (Jehlani) knows if I’m gonna cut or pass it,” Jalen says. “It’s very exciting because he’s the person I know best, and I know he’s not going to fail me.”

There’s a mutual confidence boost when the twins are on the floor together. “I’m more confident (with Jalen on the court),” Jehlani says.

The sets of twins, and the rest of the Coyotes, picked up their first win ever by beating Sarasota Military Academy 53-49 on Dec. 19 — their last game before the holiday break. Their schedule so far has been  brutal, with losses to Wiregrass Ranch High, Berkeley Prep and Tampa Catholic.

Isaiah Flores leads the team with 8.3 points a game, with Jai-Keem right behind him at 7.3 and Tai-Sheim at 6.

“Both sets of twins are great kids that come from great families and they give 100 percent,” Coyotes head coach Anthony Mitchell says. “Our team is a work in progress, but having siblings together helps unite us.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Therein lies Johnson’s predicament.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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