Success Comes Quickly For Cypress Creek Lacrosse

In just their third high school lacrosse season, the Cypress Creek High lacrosse team went 15-5 and captured its first District championship. (Photos courtesy of Jason Alvis)

Cypress Creek High is only a four-year-old school, but it has already earned district championships in several sports. And now, you can add girls lacrosse to that list.

The Coyotes, who started as a club team in 2018 before becoming an official varsity sport in 2019, won the school’s first lacrosse District championship (Class A-District 5) in April when they defeated Lake Wales 11-10. 

That was followed a week later by a loss to nationally-ranked Orlando Lake Highland Prep in the A-2 Regional playoffs, but Cypress Creek finished 15-5 and won all six of its District games.

Quite a turnaround for a program that could barely field a team its first season.

“We had a couple of years under our belt and then, this year, it just kinda clicked,’’ Coyotes coach Jason Alvis says. “They had experience. It was amazing how much it took off because of that.’’

It’s also amazing how far the team has come since its inaugural season.

Alvis, who never played lacrosse but got into the sport just through attending oldest daughter Jordan’s club practices as a freshman for Wiregrass Ranch High’s club team, petitioned Cypress Creek at the behest of his daughter to see if the school could start its own club team.

The school said okay, but had one question: “Who’s going to be the coach?,’’ Alvis remembers.  

Even though he was not a teacher on campus, because it was only a club team, it turned out Alvis was going to be the coach.

In 2018, he formed the club team, using players from both Cypress Creek and Wesley Chapel high schools and playing other high school club teams. While club lacrosse isn’t sanctioned by the Florida High School Athletic Association (FHSAA) and you don’t compete for district or state titles, the Coyotes did get to play an international friendly against Cheltenham High School from the U.K.

“After the game, the girls exchanged stories and gifts,” Alvis says. “It was quite the experience.”

Jason Alvis (right) and assistant coach Sydney Maziarz celebrate the Coyotes’ District title.

However, because lacrosse wasn’t exactly a well-known sport and had to compete for players with the more established spring sports like tennis, softball and track and field, it was tough to drum up interest the first year. Alvis says he never had more than 16 girls in 2018; you need 12 for a full lineup. 

“It was bad,’’ Alvis says. “I had four or five girls at any one practice. With me not being on campus, I couldn’t recruit. I told some of our club girls that they had to find multi-sport girls and get them to try lacrosse. We had just enough girls to field a team.’’

In 2019, the Cypress Creek lacrosse team was sanctioned by the FHSAA and could play other high school teams. The Coyotes finished 7-9 that year, and started off the 2020 season 6-3 with mostly underclassmen before Covid-19 ended the season.

With a group of 10 seniors and some talented underclassmen returning, Cypress Creek was ready to prove itself this season. With a much-more-competitive roster of 23 players, the Coyotes started with 7-0 and 10-1 records, on the way to a 15-5 season. Two of their five losses were by a single goal.

The experienced Coyotes powered their way to an unlikely appearance in the District A-5 championship game. After trailing 9-4 at halftime, they showed some of the resilience built up in their early years and locked down Lake Wales, holding the Highlanders to one goal in the second half to win 11-10 and capture the District title.

“I didn’t know what winning was like,’’ says junior midfielder Liberty Mermerian, who says she won two games in two years for her previous high school team in Boise, ID, before transferring to Cypress Creek. “I found out it was about the work you put in. My first high school team, we didn’t really put in much effort. But here, when we won that District (final), it was all about the attitude of our players and the amount of effort we put in. When we all celebrated on that field and everybody was hugging each other, that was an earned moment.’’

The Coyotes not only earned their first-ever District championship banner, they also received some postseason accolades. Three players were named first team All-Conference: Junior defender and team captain Miranda Garcia, sophomore Avery Smith (team-high 82 goals) and senior Brianna Segers (65 goals).

Two players were named to the second team: Mermerian and Kendall Smith. 

Cypress Creek was named the Sunshine Athletic Conference Team of the Year and Alvis was named the Coach of the Year. 

Despite losing 10 seniors to graduation from this team, Alvis believes the success is just beginning for this program. There will only be three seniors next year, but he knows there is talent in the younger classes, including his daughter Jenna, who will be a junior. 

“And I’ve heard that with our success, girls from other sports are saying ‘Hey, I think I’m going to try lacrosse now,’’ Alvis says. 

Despite Promotional Concerns, DICK’s Lacrosse Tournament Is Back

The 13th annual DICK’s Sporting Goods Tournament of Champions (ToC), dubbed as the national championships for the sport of lacrosse, is once again scheduled to be played in Wesley Chapel at the end of the month.

However, the once-friendly relationship between host Pasco County and Kroenke Sports Enterprises (KSE), LLC, which puts on the event, has become a little bit frosty, as the county is claiming KSE is not holding up its end of a deal the parties agreed to in 2016.

As a result, the Pasco County Board of County Commissioners voted on Dec. 12 to reduce the amount of money the county pays the tournament organizers from $90,000 to $20,000.

According to a letter sent to KSE’s Stephen Stienker, the county is claiming that KSE agreed to promote Pasco County in exchange for the $90,000 annual rights fee the county previously paid to KSE each year.

Administered by the Pasco County Tourist Development Council (TDC) and collected from a local-option tourist development tax on transient lodging like hotels, motels and campgrounds, the $90,000 is roughly half of the county’s budget for sports event sponsorships.

Adam Thomas, who replaced Ed Caum as the Pasco County director of tourism in September, said that as a new employee, he was going through various contracts and checking to make sure the deliverables were being met. After some research, Thomas determined that was not happening in KSE’s case.

“None of the agreement was being met,’’ Thomas says.

That included displaying the county’s name or “Visit Pasco” slogan and logo on the websites of 60-plus qualifying tournaments in 22 different states for the DICK’s ToC, as well as in newsletters, backdrop banners, apparel, mentions in news and press releases and on trophies.

Thomas said that when he visited the websites of the qualifying tournaments, many weren’t even active, and on the ones that were still active, he says there was not a single mention of Pasco.

Videos were supposed to be created by KSE as well, promoting the DICK’s ToC and Pasco County.

“It is a long laundry list of deliverables and obligations that weren’t being done,” Thomas says.

The county has requested a full and detailed accounting of the expenditures of the $90,000 paid to KSE for the 2016 event and expenditures already made for the 2017 ToC.

According to Florida Statute 125.0104, any money from the Tourist Development Tax earmarked for promotion has to be spent on promotion.

“I do want to see the audit of 2016,’’ Thomas says. “If that money is being spent on something else, like operations or salaries, that’s a bigger problem.”

Thomas said this year’s DICK’s ToC, scheduled to be played Dec. 29-31 at Wesley Chapel District Park on Boyette Rd. and Wesley Chapel High on Wells Rd., will still go on, but the letter to KSE says it will take whatever legal remedies are necessary, from withholding payment or even terminating the agreement.

This is the second year of the two-year deal — with an option for a third year — Pasco County signed with KSE in May of 2016.

“We don’t want the tournament to cancel,” Thomas says. “It brings a lot of people and fresh dollars to our economy. I just want the return on investment from the agreement that was signed by KSE and the county. I don’t want them to cancel the tournament at all.”

The ToC website, at NDPLacrosse.com, has made some changes and is currently referencing Pasco County twice, while also displaying a large bright yellow “Visit Pasco” logo.

The DICK’s ToC started in 2006, and has been held in Wesley Chapel every year since 2008. Hosted by the Wesley Chapel Athletic Association (WCAA), the county says the tournament has an estimated annual economic impact of about $3 million.

As many as 115 teams have competed in the ToC, although in recent years, those numbers have declined. In 2015, there were 73 teams participating, and last year’s event attracted only 53 teams.

Tj Fitzsimons, the Wiregrass Ranch High lacrosse coach who has coached some of the Pasco Lions teams from the WCAA at the tournament in the past, said he was told just under 70 teams are slated for this year’s event.

Teams earn bids at regional qualifying tournaments to compete for the DICK’s national championship across five divisions – Rising Stars (graduation years of 2019, 2020 and 2021), Elite (2018-2021) and 9U-10U through 15U.

One of those qualifiers, the Derek Pieper Memorial Cup, is held in Wesley Chapel every year in mid-November.

Game times each day will be held from 8 a.m.-6 p.m. For more information, visit NDPlacrosse.com/Default.aspx?tabid=493987.