Freedom High senior standout Megan Clark (center) signed her letter of intent with Tennessee Tech last month.
When you build a winning basketball program, new players can tend to think that the successes of the past will automatically continue. Freedom High girls basketball coach Laurie Pacholke says she sees it all the time.
But, very often, she says, it doesn’t.
And, that kind of lesson is never very easy for a coach to drill into his or her players’ heads.
After a six-year run that included 127 victories, four trips to the playoffs and a state semifinal appearance in 2013, the Patriots suffered through the first losing season since Pacholke became head coach in 2009.
Freedom’s 13-15 record included the Pats’ first loss to New Tampa rival Wharton High since 2010.
Pacholke’s team did still make the playoffs and nearly upset traditional state powerhouse Winter Haven High in the playoffs — losing by one point — but Pacholke says, “Looking at the record…yeah, that’s brutal.”
Freedom, which opened the 2016-17 season with a 33-30 loss to Alonso but has bounced back with consecutive wins over Gaither and Wiregrass Ranch, returns six seniors in its effort to bounce back this season, including Megan Clark, who averaged 14.7 points a game last year after missing the first month and a half with an injury.
Pacholke says that Clark — a 5-foot-9 senior forward who has signed to play college ball for Division I-A Tennessee Tech in Cookeville, TN — has a high basketball IQ, a sterling work ethic and a nose for the ball.
“She’ll lead us in offensive rebounds, that is for sure,’’ Pacholke says, adding that Clark’s pull-up, mid-range jumper and three-point shot are as good as anyone she has ever coached.
Olivia Williams will, “shock a lot of people,” Pacholke says. The 6-1 senior center is a top rebounder with a nice shot from 14 feet in, and has great hands. Taraja Leon, a 5-7 senior, will take over the starting point guard duties after scoring 7.2 points a game in a reserve role last year, and 5-10 senior forward Ashley Bell brings lockdown defense and a strong physical style to the Pats.
Another senior, 5-7 forward Gazal Refaee, will add some strength in the post, and 6-foot sophomore center Ragen Roger has made significant progress after playing in 14 games as a freshman.
“I like the pieces that we have,’’ Pacholke says. “It’s a new year, and I told them you can’t worry about anything that happened in the past.”
(Right) Wharton High’s Ashley “A.J.” Jones (left) & Parker Onderko will be counted on to help carry the team until they can find their footing.
Wildcats Looking For A Spark
Wharton, which was 12-14 last year, will have to overcome offseason injuries to key players to reach double-digit wins again.
Seniors Dawn Norwood and Sabrina Eye, two post players at 5-10 and 6-1, respectively, both suffered torn ACLs. Coach Chad Reed says he hopes to get Eye back before the end of the season.
“Those are significant,” he says. “They will hurt.’’
They have hurt. The Wildcats got off to a slow start, losing their first five games to open the season. They are, however, coming off a 51-49 victory over Gaither on Nov. 30.
Two starters from last year — 5-8 senior point guard Ashley Jones and 5-4 senior guard Parker Onderko — will be asked to carry the load early. Reed says he the Wildcats will have to find success with a rotation of transfers and new and old players, such as 5-10 junior forward Regina Henry, 5-11 sophomore center Semera Wilson and 5-3 sophomore guard Mecca Bythewood, as well as from promising freshmen like 5-10 forward Julian Trice and 5-4 guard Angelica Ayala.
Reed said he has some good shooters, so the Wildcats will rely on quick ball movement to create open shots. He thinks because of all the new pieces, Wharton will take its lumps this year, but he believes the future is bright.
“We have to take it game to game,’’ Reed said. “It can’t be about wins and losses (right now). If we get better each game, the wins will come.”
(l-r) Tray Gildon, Dae’son Barnes and Isaiah Thomas are returning starters for Wharton, which is looking for another 20-win season.
Since taking over the Paul R. Wharton High boys basketball program in 1997, coach Tommy Tonelli has had nothing but success.
Only one time have his Wildcats not won at least 18 games. And, Tonelli has guided the Wildcats to eleven straight 20-win seasons, seven district titles and nine playoff appearances.
But last year, despite going 21-5, the Wildcats did not make the playoffs, losing in the District semifinals to arch-rival Freedom High in Tampa Palms.
The two teams renew their rivalry tonight in a Class 8A, District 8 clash at 6:30 p.m. at Wharton, with the Wildcats looking to get back to the postseason and Freedom looking at a rebuilding year.
“I feel this team definitely has a real good outlook and can achieve whatever they want,’’ says Tonelli, who is just another 20-win season shy of 400 career wins with the school. “They just have to earn it and pay the price and go out and compete for it. It is a talented group. We have the necessary pieces.”
Three of those pieces are returning senior starters: Tray Gildon, Dae’son Barnes and Isaiah Thomas. Another big piece should be transfer Reggie Jennings, a 6-3 senior guard who averaged 20.1 points and 10 rebounds a game last year for Wesley Chapel High.
Gildon started every game as a junior, and the 6-foot-1 point guard is poised to have a big season. Tonelli said Gildon shined during the offseason, showing leaps forward in maturity and leadership. Combine that with a smooth handle, great vision and a solid jumper, and Gildon could emerge as one of the Tampa Bay area’s top point guards.
“He has good natural point guard ability,’’ Tonelli says. “He has all the intangibles.”
Barnes, a 6-2 shooting guard, also played a lot as a junior. He has improved his jump shot and his defense and Tonelli thinks Barnes can raise his scoring average into double digits.
“He can put the ball in the basket a lot of different ways,’’ the coach says.
Thomas is a 6-3 forward who started last year as a reserve and played his way into the starting lineup midway through the season. He provided a lift for the ‘Cats on offense, and is a tremendous leaper who plays above the rim.
Wharton, which is 2-0, isn’t a very big or physical team this year, but they are athletic and fairly long, with players like 6-2 sophomore guard Darin Green,6-5 junior point guard D.J. Henderson and junior varsity call-up Renaldo Williams all expected to play big roles this season.
“I’m real excited about our guys,’’ Tonelli says, “and what I think we can accomplish.”
Freedom Hoping To Reload
Freedom coach Cedric Smith is taking a more muted tone with the Patriots as he waits to see how his team gels.
The Pats lost seven seniors from last year’s team, including about 41 of the 57 points per game the team averaged in winning a school-record 23 games.
Freedom head coach Cedric Smith
Freedom, which is 1-1 after beating Gaither to open the season and then dropping a close 60-56 decision to Wiregrass Ranch in a pair of Class 8A, District 8 games, will rely on Chase Creasy, a 6-4 senior wing player that Smith thinks can be better than he has been. Last year, Creasy averaged just 6 points per game in limited minutes but was third on the team in three-pointers made.
The Patriots also return 6-8 junior Alek Rojas and 6-7 senior Nicola Maganuco, two centers. Neither player made a big impact last year, averaging a combined 5.7 points and 2.8 rebounds, but Smith is counting on them to put up bigger numbers in 2016-17.
Gerald Fleming, an athletic 6-4 senior forward, and 5-8 sophomore point guard Nicholas Butler round out the starters for Freedom.
“We have some work to do,’’ said Smith, the former USF star who took over the program in 2011 and finished 8-14 his first season, but has improved the team’s win total every year since then.
West Meadows mom Laura Sun Engelberger lost her son to drug use earlier this year.
Although we never met until about a month ago, Laura Sun Engelberger and I have a lot in common. We’ve both raised our families here in New Tampa, we’re both divorced and we both were blessed with two amazing sons.
But, the reason Laura and I met at her home in West Meadows a few weeks ago isn’t a happy one. Laura’s older son, Brandon Sun, tragically passed away a few months ago, five months before his 17th birthday. Laura still doesn’t know exactly what transpired the day he died, but she waited to talk about what happened until after she got back the autopsy and toxicology report ten weeks after he passed (on June 22), which said her son died from an “accidental drowning,” even though she already knew he also took two “tabs” of LSD that night.
“And, unfortunately, I have since learned that this wasn’t the first time Brandon took LSD,” she said. “It’s a nightmare that I never thought I would go through with either of my kids, but certainly not this sweet, wonderful honor student with everything to live for.”
Laura says she knows teenagers can be sullen and moody, especially when the family is going through a divorce, and she admits that Brandon’s personality had started to change when she and her now-ex-husband first separated two years ago. “Brandon definitely seemed angry,” she says, but she added that during the weeks before he passed away, Brandon had seemed more like his old self, “and his grades (he was at Freedom High in Tampa Palms) never suffered.”
Brandon
Laura admits that, especially when she was raising Brandon and his brother Austin herself during the separation period, “I was and I guess I still am that over-protective mom. I wouldn’t let Brandon have a car unless he had a job, I made him sign a contract to have a cell phone in eighth grade and I thought I always made sure I knew where he was and who he was with.”
She also admits that she had concerns about some of Brandon’s friends, but is quick to say she doesn’t blame the four boys who were with him the night he passed away.
“I’ve told the other boys I forgive them,” Laura says. “Now, I’m just hoping that by telling our story, maybe another family might not have to go through what we have.”
So, What Actually Happened?
Laura told me that Brandon and four of his friends had driven to the rest area located near the north end (in St. Petersburg) of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge that night to drop acid together.
“Five boys left together, supposedly to go to one of the other boys’ houses, on a Monday night, but only four came home,” she told me through tears. “They left the campground without him around 10:30 the next morning and didn’t tell anyone what happened until I started calling and texting his friends looking for him at 3:45.”
The problem, she said, was that the boys all said the same thing — while being interviewed by the police later on Tuesday — that they all took the LSD together that night, but they honestly didn’t know and couldn’t remember if Brandon went walking off by himself or what happened to him at all.
“But, they were so afraid of getting in trouble themselves that they decided to leave and not say anything,” she recalls. “If they would’ve called 9-1-1 as soon as they realized they couldn’t find him, maybe my son would still be alive today. I don’t know. All I know is that his body was literally “caught” by a high school kid near the (North Skyway Fishing) Pier while he was fishing two days later.”
That’s the lesson Laura hopes other parentswill tell their teenagers after reading this story.
“There is a ‘Good Samaritan 911’ law here in Florida (see page 39) that would have protected those children from any possible prosecution if they would have called the police,” she said. “But, young people are so afraid of ‘getting in trouble’ that they will do everything they can to avoid talking to the police or even their parents, especially when they’ve been taking drugs.”
As Laura spoke, the case reminded me all too much of a similar one about a decade ago, when former Wharton High student Sara Rinaldi, whose mother used to work for me, died several hours after her eyes rolled back in her head following a night of partying due to an apparently lethal mix of drugs because her friends were too afraid to call an ambulance.
Laura says that her son did not jump off the Skyway Bridge, as his body showed no signs of that kind of trauma. I also was surprised to learn that neither she nor her ex-husband had to identify their son’s body in person.
“Brandon’s body was identified from a photograph, not in person,” she says. “There was an official autopsy and toxicology report that we didn’t get until ten weeks later.”
She adds, “Some people have asked me how I could not have identified him, didn’t I need that closure? The closure is that my son is gone. Knowing exactly how he died isn’t going to change that.”
She cautioned, however, that if you’re the parent of a teenager, don’t just assume you know if your child is doing drugs or not.
“Every high school in this area has kids who are doing drugs and they usually get them from other kids at school,” she says. “Don’t think you’re not going to be touched by this just because you come from a ‘good family.’ We were that good family, but it still happened to us. Of course, everyone has been through some sort of tragedy. Mine is no better or worse than anyone else’s. Grief is all the same.”
So, then why is Laura sharing her story now? “I guess I’m hoping that other parents will tell their kids that when faced with a choice that can change someone’s life, they should do the right thing and not be more afraid of getting in trouble,” she says. “If you know something, you have to snitch, you have to tell. Would you rather have a friend be angry with you or have to live with a decision you made for the rest of your life?”
Laura adds that parents also should put GPS trackers in their kids’ phones and in their cars, “because, based on what I’ve now seen in my son’s phone, none of these kids are going where they say they’re going.”
And, speaking of Brandon’s phone, she says that it’s obvious that kids are “doing their research” about the different types of drugs — what they can expect if they take them and even where to buy them.
“There’s pictures of not only Brandon, but other kids — some of whom I don’t even know — taking drugs in pictures on his phone,” she says. “When I saw the messages about buying and selling and taking drugs and all of these pictures, I literally threw up.”
And, the other thing she wants to stress is that Brandon and his friends — some of whom go to Wharton, Wiregrass Ranch, Sunlake and Steinbrenner — are not what anyone would consider to be “druggies.”
“These are all smart kids who do great in school, from good families,” she says. “I hope people who read this story will take it to heart and start finding out what’s really going on with their children.”
As I was leaving Laura’s home, her friend Jen, who was with her the day she found out Brandon had passed, told me, “Brandon was the one who was supposed to make it big out of all these kids. Smart, talented and loved. No one could believe this happened to him.”
Laura also says she appreciates the amazing outpouring of support she has received from the community — at the candlelight vigil at Freedom a couple of days after Brandon died, at his memorial service on June 28 (both of which had as many as 500 people in attendance) and in the months since then. “It makes you feel good, as a mother, to hear so many people say so many wonderful things about your child. I just wish it wasn’t for this reason.”
SB 278: Preventing Deaths from Drug-related Overdoses
(Known) as the “911 Good Samaritan Act; (the statute provides) that a person acting in good faith who seeks medical assistance for an individual experiencing a drug-related overdose may not be charged, prosecuted, or penalized for specified offenses in certain circumstances; providing that a person who experiences a drug-related overdose and needs medical assistance may not be charged, prosecuted, or penalized for specified offenses in certain circumstances; providing that the protections from prosecution for specified offenses are not grounds for suppression of evidence in other prosecutions; amending mitigating circumstances under which a departure from the lowest permissible criminal sentence is reasonably justified to include circumstances in which a defendant was making a good faith effort to obtain or provide medical assistance for an individual experiencing a drug-related overdose, etc.
The Freedom boys golf team is the closest thing to a high school sports dynasty New Tampa has, with four straight District titles and two trips to the State championships since 2013.
After four consecutive District championships, the Freedom golf team took the next step and finally made it back to state, finishing 11th out of 16 teams at the Class 3A State Championships Oct. 25-26.
Playing on the El Campeon Golf Course at the Mission Inn Resort & Club in Howey-in-the-Hills, FL, the Patriots got strong outings from Cy Storlien, Cooper Smith and Tyler Bray to finish with a two-day team total of 646 strokes.
Nick Mitchell and Sam Smith both had big rebounds from Day One, shaving a combined 17 strokes from their scores.
Only six strokes separated the sixth-place team and the 11th-place team.
Tampa’s Plant High won the title with a score of 606.
The Patriots, who won their fourth straight District title under coach Mike Passarelli on Oct. 10 at Hunter’s Green Country Club, then took second at Regionals at Innisbrook in Palm Harbor a week later. Storlien was team medalist at both tournaments, shooting 73s while winning his second straight individual District title.
At State, the team started out strong.
On the opening day, Storlien, one of three seniors (along with Mitchell and Bray), birdied Nos. 2, 3 and 10 to go minus-1 after 10 holes on the 6,764-yard, par-72 course.
Storlien bogeyed the final two holes to finish the day with a 3-over par 75.
Cooper Smith was just as hot early, with five birdies in his first round, but struggled with consistency, mixing in three double-bogeys to finish with a 7-over 79.
Bray shot an 80 in the first round, which he duplicated in the second round.
Mitchell struggled with a 91 on day one, and Sam Smith shot a 95, but both Patriots came back strong on day two. Smith knocked 12 shots off his first round with an 83, and Mitchell shot an 86.
Storlien continued his consistent golf. He picked up birdies on the 420-yard No. 5 hole and the 347-yard No. 16, both par 4s.
Smith birdied the par-3 holes at No. 8 and No. 15 to finish with an 80 on the second day.
The trip to states was the second for Freedom. The Patriots also advanced to States in 2013, finishing last.
Almost the entire Wharton girls cross country team that won the county championship (above) and finished third at the Class 4A State meet returns this season.
School may have just started at Paul R. Wharton and Freedom high schools, but preparation for the fall athletic season began in earnest in July for the New Tampa area’s prep teams. What lies ahead for the locals?
Wharton — At Wharton, the only fall team not facing many questions may be the girls cross country team, which should be the best team in our coverage area.
The Wildcat girls are coming off their best season since 2004, when it finished as the state runner-up in Class 3A.
Behind Alisha Deschenes — who finished 21st overall in the state with a time of 19 minutes, 46 seconds and was the top Wharton finisher at the Class 4A State meet — the Wildcats finished third behind state champion Winter Park in 2015.
Deschenes, who will be a junior, returns, along with every other Wharton finisher that scored at state, including seniors Rania Samhouri, Mari James and Bryanna Rivers, and junior Rachel Lettiero.
And, all five scoring finishers for Wharton finished in the top 50 at state.
The boys also were young last season, with Noah Damjanovic, now a junior, leading the team and returning.
Wharton outside hitter Kathryn Attar will head to Yale after her upcoming senior season.
The Wharton volleyball team graduated a strong core of players — setter Tyler Sroufe, middle blocker Lindsey Schaible and libero Chanelle Hargreaves all signed to play in college last November — so star outside hitter Kathyrn Attar will be called upon to carry the Wildcats this season.
Attar, who has orally committed to Yale University in New Haven, CT, had 358 kills last year, one of the top totals in the state, and passed the 1,000-kill mark for her career. She’s one of the biggest hitters in the Tampa Bay area, and worth the price of admission.
And, the Wildcat football team embarks on a season without a proven signal caller under center, but until a quarterback develops, look for running back Shannen King to carry the ball a lot as Wharton tries to compete with District 7A-8 powers like Plant and Sickles.
Feel free to go ahead and circle Sept. 23 on your football calendar — that’s when Wharton hosts arch-rival Freedom this year in football. The Wildcats won last year’s battle 44-20, and haven’t lost to the Patriots since 2009.
Freedom — Freedom also has questions at quarterback and a promising rushing attack, as well as a new head coach in Floyd Graham, who was able to build solid programs at Newsome and Steinbrenner from scratch. He’ll have more to work with at Freedom, but the task will be just as tall.
Football isn’t the only sport with a new head coach at Freedom, as volleyball coach Damian Goderich takes over for Brittany Castelamare after last year’s 9-9 season. The Patriots showed some improvement last year down the stretch, winning three straight games before a close defeat against Wharton to end the season, and despite a few key losses to graduation, last year’s leader in kills (Cameron Young), digs (Jazmine Boga) and blocks (Lauren Crum) all return.
The Freedom cross country teams expect to be more competitive, as most of the top runners, like boys Alejandro Michel and Baily Easterling and girls Morgan Kugel, Dana Elkalazani and Schuyler Rutherford, return from last season.
Here are the football and volleyball schedules for both high schools:
task will be just as tall.