Congratulations go out to my wife Jannah and her daughter Lauren Cione, who together put on a successful first charity golf fund raiser that raised about $7,000 for the new RADDSports Charity, Inc., a 501(c)(3) registered nonprofit charitable organization. The new charity will provide scholarships to young athletes who couldn’t otherwise afford to participate in the sports programs at the Wiregrass Ranch Sports Campus of Pasco County.
The golf tournament was held at the recently revamped Lexington Oaks Golf Club on Dec. 6 and was blessed with more than 70 golfers, wonderful auction prizes, a bag lunch and a delicious Italian buffet dinner created and served by Lexington Oaks owner Anass El-Omari, his wife Susana Herrera and the golf club staff.
RADDSports president and CEO Richard Blalock told the golfers about the reason why he and the management of RADDSports wanted to start the nonprofit and Anass gave some pre-tournament instructions.
Several of the tournament’s sponsors, including the Champion Sponsor, the Residence Inn Tampa-Wesley Chapel, Heineken and JJ Taylor provided on-course adult beverages.
What a great day! — Gary Nager; photos by Charmaine George & Morgan Conlin
We’ve been telling you about RADDSports, the private company that has been responsible for the management and all of the programs at the Wiregrass Ranch Sports Campus of Pasco County, since long before the 98,000-sq.-ft. AdventHealth Sports Arena opened to the public at the Sports Campus in August of 2020.
But, one of the things the management at RADDSports had noticed since it opened is that there are a lot of outstanding athletes throughout the Tampa Bay area who can’t afford to pay for the basketball, volleyball, soccer, cheerleading and lacrosse programs offered at the Sports Campus, and that just didn’t sit well with president and CEO Richard Blalock and his management team.
In order to rectify that situation, Blalock and his director of marketing Jannah Nager, who had years of prior experience in similar positions for nonprofit organizations like the American Cancer Society and the Pasco Education Foundation, decided to start their own nonprofit charity in order to provide scholarships for kids of all ages and ability levels who couldn’t afford to participate in the programs at the Sports Campus.
“RADDSports Charity wants to change the culture of youth sports by promoting equal access to quality sports and fitness programs, regardless of their ability to pay,” says Blalock, who also serves as the new Charity’s Chairman of the Board. “We decided we needed to start our charity to provide these kids who couldn’t afford our programs with scholarships to participate in their choice of sports at the Wiregrass Sports Campus of Pasco County. Our goal is to promote the total overall well-being and development of each child through education, discipline, physical fitness and teaching proper technique of each sport, and we don’t want cost to be an issue.”
Former NFL players Brandon Ghee (left) and Chris Pressley are among the former pro and college athletes on the Board of Directors of the new RADDSports Charity, which will be hosting its first-ever fund-raising golf tournament at Lexington Oaks Golf Club on Dec. 6.
How You Can Help
In order to kick off the fund-raising arm of the new RADDSports Charity, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, Nager decided to organize a charity golf tournament, which will be held on Monday, December 6, at the recently upgraded Lexington Oaks Golf Club.
“This event is our first of hopefully many fund raisers for the RADDSports Charity,” Nager says. “It should allow us to fund our first round of scholarships, and we’re still looking for not only golfers to play in the tournament, but also businesses who want to help young athletes in need by supporting this and other upcoming events.”
Blalock, Nager, and their fellow original RADDSports management team members Anthony Homer and Arika DeLazzer all serve on the new RADDSports Charity’s Board of Directors. Other members of the Board include former NFL defensive back Brandon Ghee, who is the director of operations for Yo Murphy Performance, the sports training company that operates at the Sports Campus, Realtor and former NFL fullback Chris Pressley (who played a few games with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers), and former Florida State University tight end Carver Donaldson.
“We’re excited to kick off our fund-raising for RADDSports Charity at Lexington Oaks,” Nager says. “We thank owner Anass El-Omari, who gave us a price for golfers that ensures we will be able to raise money for our charity with this event.”
To play in the first RADDSports Charity Golf Tournament, or to help sponsor it, visit RADDSportsCharity.org, email development director Lauren Cione at Lauren@RADDSports.com or call (727) 271-4873. Sponsorships start at as little as $250 and your company’s logo/graphics will be displayed at the event.
(L.-r.) Wharton PTSA president Jenny Giraldo, Hunter’s Green Elementary PTA president Rebecca Towner, Hunter’s Green Community Association president Rob Larsen and Benito/Wharton PTSA treasurer Jamie Priest are helping to organize the Chip In For Education golf tournament fund raiser for Labor Day (Mon., Sept. 6). (Photo: Charmaine George)
Emerging from a pandemic and a year when most Parent Teacher Associations (PTSAs) had a hard time organizing and hosting fund raisers and, in most cases, weren’t even allowed on campus, the Hunter’s Green Community Association came up with an idea to give a boost to the three schools where the community’s kids are zoned to attend.
For the past 25 years, residents of Hunter’s Green have sent their kids to Hunter’s Green Elementary, Benito Middle School and Wharton High.
This Labor Day, on Monday, September 6, those three schools will benefit from the “Chip In For Education” golf tournament at Hunter’s Green Country Club.
“There are a lot more students at these schools than just Hunter’s Green residents,” says Rob Larsen, the president of the Hunter’s Green Community Association, who has been a resident of Hunter’s Green since 1992 and whose three kids attended the local public schools. “So, this is an opportunity to build community. We have good schools and teachers and this is something we can do to promote that and get people together.”
In fact, the three schools combined serve nearly 4,000 students.
Volunteers from the elementary school PTA and the middle and high school PTSAs (Parent Teacher Student Associations) are helping to make the tournament a reality.
AdventHealth, which is planning to open its Care Pavilion (se ad on pg. 2) outside the Hunter’s Green neighborhood (in the former LifePoint Church building) in September, has signed on as the title sponsor of the event.
The tournament will be open to 144 golfers, with proceeds from registration, sponsorships, and a silent auction going to the PTA/PTSAs at each school.
Rebecca Towner, the president of the Hunter’s Green Elementary PTA and a Hunter’s Green resident, says the funds will be allocated according to the number of students at each school, and it will be up to each PTA how to spend the money.
“This is a way for schools to work together instead of being segmented and thinking only about where you are now,” says Rebecca. “Right now, I only have kids at the elementary school, but what’s going on at Benito and Wharton matters to me, too, because one day that’s where we’re going to be.”
Rob, Rebecca, and the team of volunteers helping to make this tournament happen hope that members of the community will sign up to play, donate auction items, and consider becoming sponsors to make the event a success for the local schools.
The day’s events will include a family-friendly luncheon with activities for kids. Non-golfers are invited to participate in the luncheon and silent auction.
The Chip In For Education Golf Tournament will be held at Hunter’s Green Country Club (18101 Longwater Run Dr.). The four-person team scramble tournament will have a 9 a.m. shotgun start and will be followed by family-friendly festivities with a silent and live auction and luncheon.
For more info, visit HuntersGreen.com and click on “Chip In For Education Golf Tournament” under the “Resident Life” tab of the menu.
Chuck Leisek has spent many of his mornings the past 15 years hitting golf balls at the Pebble Creek Golf Club (PCGC), where he lives just off the 12th hole.
The 86-year-old never broke 70, but shot his age plenty of times, has just missed a hole-in-one on the No. 2 and No. 6 holes, and loved every day he was out on the course.
When he found out that the golf course was shutting down for \good on July 31, he and his wife Janice, also an avid golfer, were crestfallen.
“We never thought in our wildest dreams this golf course would ever be closed,” says Leisek. “It’s deeply disappointing. And that’s an understatement.”
The writing, however, had been on the wall for the past few years, as owner Bill Place, who bought the club in 2005, has been actively trying to sell the property the past five or so years.
The first weekend in June, letters were sent out informing residents that the 6,436-yard golf course, the oldest in New Tampa, was shutting down for good.
Place said there is no special event or farewell scheduled for the club. The last one out on the 31st will turn off the lights, lock the door and that will be it.
Bill Place
Place is currently negotiating with Pulte Homes on building 230-240 single-family homes on the golf course.
“Never once when I bought the course was I even thinking it would be a development site,” Place says. “We took what was then a failing golf course that was horribly maintained, and we put in probably $2 million over the first five years. We put in new greens, built a new banquet room, and really got the club making money initially.”
Included in the improvements was Mulligans, the popular Irish pub that opened in 2007, but also will close July 31.
Place says the 2008 recession stopped the club’s momentum, and it has been on and off ever since.
Leisek says he remembers when Place bought PCGC and restored the course to its previous glory, but says he is one of many who questions how much money Place actually has been losing.
And, although he says he had heard rumors of Place “skulking around trying to sell it,” it was still a surprise to everyone he knew when they received notice that PCGC was officially closing.
Place says club members like Leisek, however, were far and few between at Pebble Creek.
Although there are roughly 1,400 homes in the community, only 13 residents are among the club’s 70 current members. He describes the support from the community as non-existent.
“I don’t mean that negatively, like people despised the golf club,” Place says. “There’s just not that many golfers (living) in Pebble Creek.”
The view from hole 1 could soon be replaced by homes, if Bill Place has his way.
He says that when he approached the HOAs about having all homeowners pay for a social membership to keep the club alive, it was rejected.
“We do get a fair amount of public play,” Place says. “That’s essentially what kept us going as long as we did.”
Golf courses have struggled in recent years, especially as amenities in large communities, but the number of rounds played in 2020 actually were up nationally 13.9 percent from 2019, according to Golf Datatech, primarily because of people looking for relatively safe recreation activities during the pandemic.
It is the largest increase in rounds played since Golf Datatech, which specializes in golf market research, started tracking stats in 1998. Place says that surge was short-lived at Pebble Creek.
“Even though we had a little bit of a bump from Covid-19, I’ve already started to see it back off as people go back to work,” Place says. “We’re on a path to repeat 2018 and 2019, when we lost money those years.”
Place also says that merely maintaining the course had become financially untenable. He says that PCGC still has its original irrigation system and that “it failed miserably during this recent drought.”
He adds, “It was time.”
A 1968 coupon.
Pebble Creek was built by a group of nine investors and opened in 1967, at a price tag of $500,000, 20 years before Arnold Palmer visited to help dedicate the opening of Tampa Palms Golf and Country Club by playing the first round.
PCGC was once dubbed the “grandaddy of New Tampa golf courses.”
At its outset, the semi-private Pebble Creek Golf and Country Club was a hit. It quickly reached 300 members in 1967 and stopped accepting any additional members so there was room for the occasional non-member golfer. Over the years, improvements were made (the course actually opened with no bunkers) so it could host bigger tournaments, and membership ebbed and flowed.
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Mulligan’s Irish bar was a popular spot for golfers and Pebble Creek residents.
When it comes to selling the 149-acre course to a developer, which appears to be Pulte Homes, Place knows he will have a fight on his hands. Efforts to rezone the property and getting Pebble Creek’s two homeowners associations (HOAs) on board will be an uphill battle.
“Everyone is devastated,” says Wayne Rich, the president of the Pebble Creek Village HOA, which represents about 300 homes. “Nobody is excited about it.”
Rich says roughly 100 homes between the two HOAs are located on the golf course, and could have their backyards replaced by new neighbors. He has seen what Pulte is proposing, and says he’s “not crazy about it.”
A group on Facebook, as well as another group of residents, have already mobilized to oppose any development, emboldened by last year’s success at stopping Place from getting a brownfield designation for the course.
DR Horton, one of the original interested buyers of PCGC, had done preliminary testing two years ago and discovered that there were contaminants on the golf course before withdrawing its interest.
A brownfield site is a property that is contaminated, which hinders efforts to expand or redevelop it. But, there are significant tax credits offered to help clean up brownfield properties. Hillsborough County commissioners voted against the request.
Without those tax credits, Place will likely foot the bill. A preliminary estimate, he says, indicated it would take 6-9 months to decontaminate the soil. That alone could cost Place $1 million.
But, he still has potential developers like Pulte lined up.
Leisek will get in a few more rounds before then, and he says his golf membership is being transferred to Plantation Palms in Land O’Lakes, roughly 20 minutes away and also owned by Place.
He says it won’t be the same, and will miss member dinners in the clubhouse and even visits to Mulligan’s.
But, what he’ll miss most is a golf course he shared 2-3 times a week with his friends and neighbors.
“We had a lot of good times here,” Leisek says. “It’s very depressing. Very upsetting.”
For Rich, who remembers the many Mother’s Day banquets he attended at the club, July 31 will mark the end of an era.
“The golf course is part of the heritage of this community,” he says. “It’s sad to see it go.”
Congratulations go out to the Rotary Club of Wesley Chapel, which meets every Wednesday for lunch at Omari’s Grill at the Lexington Oaks Golf Club (GC), for hosting a record-breaking first-ever Charity Golf Open on Apr. 30. The golf tourney attracted nearly 130 golfers to the recently revamped Lexington Oaks GC course.
Although no final figures were available at our press time, current president Jodie Sullivan said it probably raised more than any of the club’s previous fund raisers and benefited the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office Charities, as well as the club’s community projects.
It was a hot day, but the golfers complimented the course, the Lexington Oaks staff (including owner/WC Rotary member Anass El-Omari), the Rotarians and the camaraderie — even though no one won the car donated by Parks Ford or the Sandals vacation by sinking a hole-in-one.
Lunch was served prior to the shotgun start and an awards dinner reception — which also included a cool silent auction of sports memorabilia — was held immediately after in Omari’s Grill.
“This was a great event for the club, the community and the charities,” event chair Justine Esposito said.
For more information about the club, visit WCRotary.com. — GN
