The spring sports season — which includes baseball, softball, track & field and tennis — is upon us, and with it comes one burning question:
Can the Wiregrass Ranch High (WRH) boys tennis team, which had just one senior while winning the State Class 4A Championship last season, do it again?
The answer is not as easy as you might think.
Coach Dave Wilson’s best player and No. 1 singles player, Agie Moreno, has transferred to a tennis academy, and has taken junior brother Daniel with him. The team’s No. 2 singles player, Foresight Okungbowa, has graduated and now plays for Florida Tech in Melbourne. And Wilson’s No. 3 player, Alejandro Feliciano, moved back to California for his senior season.
So, instead of returning his entire state championship squad, as he had hoped after capturing the State title last April, Wilson returns hardly any of it.
That doesn’t mean, however, that he thinks his two-time defending state champs can’t make it three in a row this season.
The only Tampa Bay schools to ever win three straight boys tennis state championships are St. Petersburg Lakewood (1973-75) and New Tampa’s Paul R. Wharton High (2008-10).
WRH also won a “National Championship”last year — the DecoTurf High School Tennis Championships in Chattanooga, TN — beating the two-time defending champions from Illinois in the semifinals, and a team from Memphis in the final.
“To be honest with you, we have a shot at going back to the state tournament,’’ says Wilson, who is also the school’s athletic director and boys soccer coach. “Whether or not we can win state again depends on whether or not we can get the right people in the right spots.”
One of those right people would be junior Noah Makarome, one of the state’s top-rated players. A busy tournament schedule has kept Makarome, who is considered a blue chip, 5-Star college recruit, from competing for the Bulls in the past, but Wilson said the door is always open if Makarome thinks he can fit high school tennis into his schedule.
Makarome’s addition alone would make WRH one of the favorites to win the Class 4A title.
“I think it has sort of been left up to Noah,’’ Wilson says. “If he wants to, he can play, but he has a busy (junior) tournament schedule and I understand that completely. The door’s been open for him. If he has the interest or the time, we’d love to have him.”
Without him, Wilson says the team still has enough talent to keep it’s current run — which includes an 89-1 record in Pasco County matches the past 10 years — going for another year.
The Bulls will rely on senior and 3-star recruit Sebastian Castillo-Sanchez, who is undefeated the past two seasons and won the No. 4 singles State championship last year, and will move up to No. 1 for the Bulls this season.
At No. 2, promising freshman Destiny Okungbowa takes over.
Okungbowa’s brothers, Courage (now playing at Florida A&M in Tallahassee) and Foresight (Florida Tech) have been WRH standouts in the past, and sister Precious is the No. 1 player for the WRH girls team this season.
“At this stage, he is so much bigger and stronger than his brothers were,’’ Wilson says of Destiny Okungbowa.
While Wilson’s team lost a lot, it did gain Jared Abrams, a junior transfer from the Naples Tennis Academy, who will play at No. 3 singles.
Senior Lorcan Cavanaugh, who was the No. 6 player for the Bulls last season, will move up to No. 4, and junior Miles Caesar will fit in at No. 5.
Wilson, who led the WRH boys soccer team to a 21-3-3 record this season, said four players from that team have also come out to play tennis. In all, 16 players tried out, which Wilson attributes to the program’s heady success in recent years.
“It definitely helps,’’ Wilson said. “All of our kids at school know how good the tennis program has been. There’s actually interest in tennis, I guess, after you win two straight state titles, and last year we won a national title, so they want to know, how do I become part of that? I don’t know if we are even close to being at the capability of last year’s team, but I know everyone wants to be part of it if we could.”
The spring sports season is in full swing. Some upcoming games to check out involving local teams:
Feb. 12: Wharton at WRH baseball & softball, 7 p.m.
Feb. 22: WRH softball at Wesley Chapel High (WCH), 7:30 p.m.
Feb. 26: Wiregrass Ranch Track & Field Invitational, 3:30 p.m.
March 1: WRH tennis at WCH, 3:15 p.m.
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