WEST ORANGE TIMES
WOTimes.com
THURSDAY, JULY 23, 2015
WINDERMERE 11-YEAR-OLDS END REMARKABLE RUN AT STATE TOURNAMENT
Beach County, 8-5. The Windermere-National 11-Year-Old All-Star team included Jacob Delano, Ethan Schalte, J.J. Paulsen, Jake Salvati, Joshua Briggs, Will Ross, James Rivera, Tracy
Mitchem, Drew Siegel, Tabor Engle and Wyatt Archer. The team is coached by Troy Delano, Rob Mitchem and head coach Brian Paulsen and lost just once in the postseason.
WLL 10-YEAR-OLDS PLACE SECOND AT SECTION 5 TOURNAMENT Windermere Little League’s 10-Year-Old “National” team won the District 14 championship and placed second at the Section 5 Tournament July 10 to 12 to end its postseason run. After losing to Oviedo in its first game of sectionals, the boys from Windermere stormed back to defeat St. Cloud 16-15 in a thriller and then also defeated Azalea Park, the host team, 8-1. The team includes Tommy Ferraro, Evan Baker, Aaron Reabe, Tyler Hershiser, Hutton Milchin, Brandon Greider, Logan Siemienas,
Oscar Perez, Sami Boufakir, Alex Garcia, Jr Millar, Corey Battey and Luke Ellenback.
Windermere was coached by Louis Massato, Brad Baker and Tom Reabe.
close call by Steven Ryzewski | Sports Editor
Ocoee Junior All-Stars fall short in sectional thriller ST. CLOUD — A thrilling game ended in a heartbreaking loss for the Ocoee Little League Junior All-Stars team on July 20 in the Section 5 Championship. A close call at home plate ended the comeback attempt Ocoee was mounting, giving St. Cloud the 5-3 victory and a trip to the state tournament. A two-out single hit by Matthew Wolfal saw a runner on second for Ocoee try to score. Although the runner seemed to have avoided the tag put on by the catcher for St. Cloud at the plate, he was called out, which ended the game. It was a tough loss to stomach, but afterward, head coach Josh Wolfal expressed his pride in the way his boys played throughout the tournament. “I was really proud of my boys for continuing to fight and continuing to believe — we took on a team that went to the state championship last year, and we gave them everything we had,” Wolfal said. After edging Windermere a week earlier in the District 14 Championship, Ocoee was within a game of the state
SIDELINE SCENE
Move to nine classifications means well but is misguided It’s not as simple as the not getting beat up by power“every kid gets a trophy” house district rivals. Sports are philosophy that rubs so many supposed to be fun, and it’s people the wrong way, but the hard to sell to kids that going Florida High School Athletic 1-9 every season is fun. Association’s recent move to So, the FHSAA’s logic is to expand baseball and softball further divvy the lower classito nine classifications still is fications — but that may not misguided. actually help. Student popuOn June 9, the FHSAA anlation certainly matters, but it nounced its board of directors is not the sole basis to judge had approved a ninth balance. classification for baseWhen you’re talking ball and softball for about private schools this school year. Boys and charter schools — and girls basketball the types of programs and girls volleyball are that make up a large to follow suit in 2016portion of the smaller 17, and the logical classifications — each assumption is that comes with its own set football will follow of priorities. There will STEVEN suit in fall 2017 after be schools that field RYZEWSKI a team, in any given games contracted for 2015 and 2016 have sport, simply for school been played. spirit and for the kids to have The reasoning isn’t terrible something to do. You’ll also — in the lower classifications, have programs that field a the disparity among district team to win championships. competitors can be signifiIf they are in the same discant. In part, this is because at trict, things get ugly — even the 1A and 2A level, a differif they have the exact same ence of a few students in a number of students. school’s enrollment can make There are all sorts of nuanca significant difference. es as to why a school in Class So, what the FHSAA has 2A may be particularly domdone with its new baseball inant when its counterpart and softball classifications in district play may not be is to rank schools by student able to keep up. For instance, population and divide them there are programs in affluent into the nine classifications areas with a high population — with the highest two-thirds of students whose parents by population divided into may have been professional Classes 5A, 6A, 7A, 8A and 9A athletes. Even if that school and the remaining third divid- has a like population, there is ed into 1A through 4A, with 1A a good chance those kids have remaining designated as rural. been groomed as high-level It starts with baseball and athletes for far longer than the softball but, in reality, it is kids who may take the field more about football. for a charter school. That’s just an example, of course (and Many familiar with prep debatably a good one or not), sports believe the goal is to but you don’t have to be familcurb the tide of smaller proiar with high school sports to grams defecting to indepensee the logic. dent leagues — such as the With that in mind, the Sunshine State Athletic ConFHSAA may need to get more ference, which houses CFCA, creative than simply adding Legacy and Windermere Prep, classifications. locally. One solution could be a A notable 82 football hybrid model of the open programs will compete as classification they have in independents in 2015. Their California. Basically, this reasons for leaving district would look like having the competition largely center powerhouses of the lower on competitive balance and
classifications between 2A and 4A play in a separate “open” classification for competitive balance and for better games (it would be a separate decision whether this would include the regular season or just the playoffs — after all, it’s just an idea). This way, you’re taking into account school population and past results, and it is something that can be revisited annually if there is a team that, perhaps, does not fit or a team that plays its way into the discussion. There are certainly questions and flaws that could be attributed to that model, so I’m not offering that specific idea as the be-all, end-all solution. Rather, what I’m suggesting is to be creative and use common sense — along with a willingness to not be adherent to the standard way of doing things. Adding classifications has opened up state title opportunities to more programs, sure, but it also has hurt sports at the higher classifications because similar-size programs that are neighbors might be in different classifications. When I was working in Seminole County a few years back, it was really cool in one sense to see Oviedo and Hagerty (which is in Oviedo, also) both advance to the FHSAA Boys Basketball Final Four in classes 7A and 8A, respectively. At the same time, there was some absurdity to these crosstown rivals that were so similar not competing for the same championship and thereby not facing one another in district and regional playoffs with the kind of atmosphere of which prep sports fans dream. West Orange and Ocoee don’t compete for the same state title in football, either. I’m all for competitive balance, but that may require getting more creative in the lower classifications and reevaluating whether the schools in 6A, 7A and 8A really need to be in three separate classifications.
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Steven Ryzewski
Ocoee head coach Josh Wolfal addressed his team during the Section 5 Championship on July 20. tournament after it defeated Union Park 13-9 on July 19. The championship against St. Cloud was a back-andforth affair, with Ocoee taking an early lead before falling behind 2-1. A pair of errors — one made by each team — resulted in two runs apiece, and the score was 4-3 going into the bottom of the sixth, when St. Cloud added a run. During Ocoee’s final at-bat, the first two hitters were retired, but the boys did not give up and tried to take advantage of a two-out walk and a batter who reached base on an interference call on the St. Cloud catcher. Although a call that
could have gone either way ended his team’s season, Wolfal recognized the tough defeat as an opportunity for his team to build character and was encouraging in his postgame talk. “That’s what we talked about — whether you win or lose, you play with character,” Wolfal said. “We came into this game giving God praise, and we gave praise right there just now and thanked him for the character of these kids.” Ocoee’s Junior All-Stars finished the postseason with a 5-2 record. Contact Steven Ryzewski at sryzewski@wotimes.com.
“He did what we expect him to do,” Pope said. “We knew that he was capable of pitching the way he did; he hit the spots when he had to hit the spots. If he put the ball over the plate, we knew the defense was going to make the plays, which they did, really.” Michael faced just three batters to close in the fourth, striking out the final two. Dr. Phillips’ pitches played into the infield’s hands: Every out not by strikeout was by groundout — with no errors — making the homer the only fly Dr. Phillips allowed all game. “It’s a lot of work, a lot of practice, a lot of repetition,” Pope said. “We were practicing since June 15. Once we were able to start practicing … we were out … for three or four hours (per practice). This is the fruits of all the effort that was put in.” Dr. Phillips will play in Pool B
Steven Ryzewski
Dr. Phillips’ Noah Sullivan was dominant on the mound during the team’s victory over St. Cloud. — the second of two four-team pools — at the state tournament in Tallahassee, with Section 4 Champion Lakewood Ranch (Bradenton, District 26), Section 6 Champion Sarasota American (District 16) and the Section 8 Champion from southeastern Florida, scheduled to be crowned July 26. The first game is scheduled
for 5 p.m. July 31 against the Section 8 Champion, followed by a doubleheader against Lakewood Ranch and Sarasota American the next day. Winning Pool B would lead to the Florida Majors Championship against the Pool A winner in one game, 10 a.m. Aug. 2. Contact Zak Kerr at zkerr@ wotimes.com.
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Windermere Little League’s 11-Year-Old “National” AllStar team concluded an impressive run through the postseason by placing third at the 2015 State of Florida Tournament in Crystal River. The team comprised local boys who already had won the District 14 and Section 5 championships went 2-1 in pool play while at Crystal River Little League this past weekend. On July 17, Windermere defeated North Springs 11-0 in four innings. On July 18, in a double-header, Windermere defeated Lakewood Ranch, 9-1, but fell to Fort Myers, 6-0. Fort Myers, which went 3-0, advanced out of the pool to the championship game on July 19, where it was defeated by North Palm
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