Old Saint Nick brought good tidings and cheer to the Miner household, even if the big fellas was a day late.
On December 26, the Miner family was notified that their son Jordan, a defensive back and offensive playmaker for Wiregrass Ranch High’s football team, was selected to be a member of USA Football’s U19 US National Team.
The national team brings in top high school athletes from all over the country and flies them in to Arlington, TX, where Miner has been preparing for tonight’s game against Team Canada at 8 p.m. on ESPN 3.
“It feels good that all of my hard work has paid off,” Jordan Miner said. “I’m really looking forward to playing for my country and with some of the best talent around the world.”
Joining Miner on the All-American team is childhood friend and former Wesley Chapel High standout Isaiah Bolden.
Bolden and Miner have been friends since the sixth grade, but were never able to play together as they played for crosstown, rival middle and high school teams. They will finally get the chance to be teammates, even if it’s only for one game.
Bolden, originally a Florida State University oral commitment before flipping to the University of Oregon, followed former Ducks head coach Willie Taggart back to FSU and signed with the Seminoles during the inaugural early signing period last month.
Miner, a firm Penn State commitment, signed with the Nittany Lions.
“Jordan has been following high school football for a long time,” John Miner, his dad, said. “He had two goals for high school, one was to sign with a Division 1 school and the other was to be an All-American.”
The Bull baller had an outstanding season for Wiregrass Ranch in 2017, and his contributions were felt all over the field. He finished with four interceptions and 39 tackles on defense, and on offense rushed for 432 yards and six TDs, caught 17 passes for 215 yards and three TDs, and even completed five of seven passes for 63 yards and a touchdown.
On special teams, he averaged 26.3 yards per kick return and 19.2 yards per punt return.
“We needed him (Miner) more on the offensive side of the ball this year and Jordan was offering to take over more responsibility there,” said Wiregrass Ranch head coach Mark Kantor. “It helped us fix things to where teams had to worry about him at many different positions.”
It also helped the Bulls make the playoffs for the second consecutive year. The Bulls won their first playoff game ever, 17-10 over Lake Nona.
Wiregrass Ranch High (WRH) football star Jordan Miner, one of the top players in the Tampa Bay area and arguably Pasco County’s best, is taking his talents to the Big Ten. Miner, a rising senior defensive back for the Bulls, announced on July 6, during a live broadcast on Spectrum Sports, that he would play college football for Penn State University.
Miner will make it binding in February on National Signing Day, and next summer will return to a region of the country where most of his family still lives.
“Well, 95 percent of our family is within a couple hours of Penn State,” Jordan’s father, John Miner, said. “Penn State felt like a family atmosphere and Coach (James) Franklin was very engaged throughout the process.”
Rated a 4-Star recruit by the 247Sports recruiting service, Miner had 29 college scholarship offers, including 10 from Southeastern Conference teams and five from the Big Ten and Atlantic Coast Conference.
Penn State, the Big Ten champions last year, went 11-3 and were ranked as high as No. 5 in the country before losing a 52-49 thriller to USC in the Rose Bowl.
Mark Tate, a Penn State alum, connected Miner to Coach Franklin. Tate was Miner’s AAU track coach in elementary school, when Miner lived in Ohio, and was an assistant coach on the Team Tampa 7-on-7 team that won the under-15 national title in 2016. Miner was one of the standouts on that team.
“I’ve known Coach Tate since I was a kid,” Miner said. “I knew he played for Penn State but I didn’t know much about the program.”
Even though he’s entering his senior year, Miner won’t turn 17 until the end of this football season. He started grade school in Ohio, where if a student turned 5 during the course of the school year, they could start kindergarten. He’s always been one of the youngest players on the field and in the back yard.
Football is in his blood, as brother Jaye, also a former WRH standout, is playing for Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton.
Jordan was called up to the WRH varsity team at age 13, after he scored five TDs in his second junior varsity game. “When you’re 13 on varsity you’re not as physical as the other kids,’’ Miner said. “So you have to outsmart them and learn the game better than anyone else.”
Despite his age, Miner used his speed and agility to become one of the team’s top DBs, receivers and return specialists. In an October 8 game last season against Wharton, Miner scored on a 53-yard touchdown reception, and then returned an interception 95 yards for a TD.
Two days later, he received a text message from PSU defensive backs coach Terry Smith. Smith made an offer, Miner posted the news on Twitter and, “it blew up from there.”
Miner has scored on a run, pass, interception return and kick return. “Jordan is the ultimate team player,” WRH head coach Mark Kantor said. “He gets us up and motivated to play at a high level, and he made a great choice to play for Franklin and Penn State.”
The Bulls visit Clearwater Central Catholic for the Pre-Season Classic on Friday, August 18, and then open the regular season at home against Zephyrhills High on August 25.
Isaiah Bolden (above, left, with the ball) won the starting QB job in the spring and delivered a long TD run and TD pass in the 31-14 victory over Mitchell High on May 18.
Like every high school football team in the Tampa Bay area, Wesley Chapel High (WCH) came into spring practice with a number of important questions.
On May 18, however, the Wildcats may have answered their most important question during their 31-14 spring football victory over Mitchell High, based in the Trinity area of New Port Richey.
After a three-way battle to replace last year’s starting quarterback Jacob Thomas, second-year Wildcats coach Anthony Egan declared Isaiah Bolden the winner of a three-way battle with senior Tyler Wittish and junior Jelani Vassel to call his signals during the 2017 football season, which begins in August.
All Bolden did was go out and threw for a touchdown and run for another in the victory by the Wildcats over Mitchell. WCH is coming off a 7-2 record in 2016, their most successful season since 2004.
“He (Bolden) started looking really good in 7-on-7s this season, so I thought we should give him a shot, see what happens,” Egan said.
Isaiah Bolden’s favorite target during the spring game was WR Justin Trapnell, who had more than 90 yards receiving, including a 58-yard TD.
While Egan also says he liked what he saw in Whittish and Vassel, it was hard to resist the temptation of putting his best athlete under center. An oral commitment to the University of Oregon in Eugene (ranked 21st in the nation by an Athlon Sports preseason poll), after initially committing to Florida State University in Tallahassee, Bolden is another threat in a backfield filled with guys who are a threat to score every time they touch the ball.
And, it’s no secret that the Wildcats want to get Bolden more touches. He had nearly 500 return yards last season, including three touchdowns (two on kickoffs and one on a punt return), but with Thomas under center and the Wildcats committed to the running game, Bolden was limited on offense.
WCH attempted fewer than eight passes a game in 2016 despite having Jacob Thomas, the county’s leading passer the year before, under center. Bolden may not throw much more than that, but expect those attempts to be a lot more exciting, as the future Duck opens things up, whether he throws the ball or tucks it under and runs. Bolden has high-level speed and his presence under center will pull attention away from the Wildcats’ receivers and backs, who are already talented and numerous.
Bolden threw for 95 yards, including a 58-yard touchdown pass to Justin Trapnell, to give WCH a 10-7 lead over Mitchell at halftime in the spring game.
On the opening drive of the second half, Bolden scrambled out of the pocket, dodged one defender and raced 64 yards for a touchdown to extend that lead to 17-7. He finished with 81 yards rushing.
Bolden won’t have to do it all, if the spring game is any indication. With a number of talented skill players returning, as well as a good group of linemen, the Wildcats seem poised to take another step in 2017, which kicks off with a home game Aug. 18 against Land O’Lakes.
Dexter Leverett, who ran for 1,249 yards and 10 touchdowns in 2016 and had 100+ yards in all nine of his starts, ran for 55 yards against Mitchell, and also led the way with some key blocks.
“Us backs, we have to take care of each other,” Leverett said. “Everyone has to do their thing.”
Malik Melvin ran for 123 yards in the spring game on eight carries, with two scores. He is a rising star and would likely be the main guy on a different team, and is coming off a solid 2016 campaign.
Keith Walker
“If you take one thing from our backfield, it’s unselfishness,” Coach Egan said. “They want to block for each other. Now we have three or four guys who want to do it.”
About the only bad news out of the Wildcats vaunted backfield this spring was the expected loss of sophomore Keith Walker, who ran for 48 yards on four carries with a TD but is zoned to attend Cypress Creek in the fall.
The WCH defense looked a little wobbly out of the gates in the spring game, giving up a three-play, 64-yard drive, but tightened up and didn’t allow another score the rest of the way (Mitchell’s second, and final, touchdown came on a kick return).
Do-everything defensive lineman Austen Wittish is the only returning starter from the 2016 front seven. He led the team in tackles last year with 93, including four for a loss of yards. The Wildcats’ success this season could hinge on how Wittish, his brother Tyler (a junior), seniors Andrew Brooks and Matt Severson and junior Ben Thomas can gel. Egan mentioned Chase Harris and Nick Hoffman as guys who will factor into the defensive alignment in 2017.
“It’s the same system but we’ll have six new guys up front this year,” Egan said.
New WRH Bull Raymond Woodie III (6), follows a block by Jordan Miner (1) on the way to a big gain in the 33-27 spring game loss to Tampa Catholic on May 19.
The Wiregrass Ranch High (WRH) football team will arguably be one of the top two or three teams in Pasco County, but that does them little good when it comes to making the playoffs because they play in Class 7A-District 8, which also includes Hillsborough County powers Plant, Sickles, Gaither and Wharton.
So why not cap the spring football season against, well, another tough Hillsborough County team? That was third-year head coach Mark Kantor’s thinking as the Bulls fell behind 33-13 in the fourth quarter before rallying back and falling just a little short in a 33-27 loss to Tampa Catholic (TC) on May 19.
“You don’t know what it’s like going against them (Hillsborough County teams) until you actually line up against them,” Kantor said. “These kids are seasoned guys now and they’ve learned so much.”
Spring offered some challenges for the Bulls, who are coming off their most successful season after a 7-3 record earned them a spot in the Class 7A playoffs last season, their first postseason appearance since 2010.
To get back to the playoffs, one of the Bulls’ primary focuses in the spring was on replacing multi-facted quarterback Chris Faddoul, who signed to play for Florida A&M University in Tallahassee. Faddoul made the lion’s share of the Bulls’ pass attempts in 2016, was third on the team in rushing and was their primary punter and place kicker. Replacing him is like replacing 3-4 players, but the Bulls have a deep roster (43 for the spring) and a lot of candidates.
Jordan Miner
Junior Grant Sessums, who threw only 28 passes in 2016, took all of the passing attempts in the spring game against TC. He was harried by the Crusaders’ defense and threw thee interceptions, but also threw for two touchdowns and ran for another.
Rising junior Raymond Woodie III comes over from playing QB at Carrollwood Day School(CDS), but played free safety in the TC game, picking off a pass and running it back 40 yards for a touchdown in the first quarter.
Woodie, a contrast to Sessum’s pocket-style passing, threw for 543 yards and four touchdowns as a sophomore for CDS, and already boasts 16 college offers from the likes of the University of Southern California, Penn State University, Michigan State University and the University of South Florida.
Nkem Asomba
His recent transfer to WRH left him out of the quarterback spot for the spring game as he learns the playbook, but Woodie could end up sharing time under center with Sessums.
“He (Woodie) adds another dimension,” Kantor said. “He’s tough, athletic and wants to help the team.”
He’ll also strengthen a running game led by senior Daquion “Da Da” McGee, who rushed for 1,063 rushing yards and 11 touchdowns last year but found tough sledding against TC, rushing 13 times for minimal gains.
His counterpart in the backfield is fullback Chase Oliver, a 5’-9”, 210-lb. sledgehammer.
“Chase is a throwback football player,” Kantor said. “If he played in the ‘60s, he’d be an All-American.”
On the Bulls’ first drive against TC, Oliver steamrolled a Crusader defender for 11 yards and a first down. On the second drive, he caught a short pass and rumbled 54 yards, clobbering defenders to set up a short score. He finished with five touches for 82 yards in the spring game, although he never found the end zone.
The WRH coaches are careful not to run Oliver too much, as they also need him on defense, where he starts at linebacker. “It’s challenging (playing both ways) but I have to lead by example,” said Oliver, who is emerging as one of the team’s veteran voices. He says he was pleased with the late charge by the Bulls vs. TC.
“You can’t go to sleep, you have to play a complete game,” Oliver said. “I like the way we fought back from 33-13.”
Speaking of veteran leadership, the Bulls’ QBs will have the luxury of having a senior-heavy receiving corps. Leading receivers Adrian Thomas and Jacob Hill return after more than 400 yards between them in 2016. Rising senior Jordan Miner is a threat at wideout and at defensive back. Daniel Biglow and Shamaur McDowell also are good-sized, veteran receivers.
McDowell, Miner and Woodie give the Bulls the most recruited trio of teammates in Pasco County.
Devaun Roberts
The Bulls also got a great showing in the spring game from senior Devaun Roberts. He set a high bar for himself against TC, picking up two sacks, a tackle for loss, a fumble recovery, a pass defended and a quarterback pressure from his defensive end position. “This is my first year at defensive end,’’ Roberts said. “I’m used to playing tight end though, so now that I’m lined up over the tight end a lot, I know the blocks. It felt good to get in there and scare that quarterback. We’re going to do well this year.”
Behind Roberts are two big, set pieces who certainly look like dominant linemen. Lenczden, whose measurements are not listed on the roster, is roughly 6’-6” and 260 pounds. Senior Nkem Asomba is listed at 6’-5”, 265. “He’s actually a basketball player, football is new to him,” Kantor said of Asomba. “He’s shown some athleticism and that he can play this sport.”
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.”
Old Saint Nick brought good tidings and cheer to the Miner household, even if the big fellas was a day late.
