Week 5: Toho Tigers can go 4-0 for 2nd straight year
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Tohopekaliga’s Delvin Prior (1) tries to gain yardage while St. Cloud’s Tashard Smith moves in for the tackle in the Tigers’ 41-19 win over the Bulldogs. Toho will look to move to 4-0 Friday against Melbourne, while St. Cloud goes to Winter Springs to again find winning ways. PHOTO/KATIE WILLIAMS -
Osceola linebacker Jalen Bell takes down a Lakeland ball carrier in Friday’s game. The Kowboys will try for their first win of the season Thursday at home against Rockledge. PHOTO/KATIE WILLIAMS
All eight county football teams will be in action this week. The Tohopekaliga Tigers seek to remain undefeated; while the Liberty Chargers under first year coach Dee Hart will be looking for their first win in 23 months when they travel to Celebration Thursday night.
Although the Tigers also started last season with a 4-0 record before finishing 6-4, second-year Coach Anthony Paradiso says this year’s edition of the Tigers is quite of bit different from last year’s team.
“Make no mistake, while we are nowhere near the level of where we want to eventually be, but this year’s team is a lot bigger, faster and stronger than last year’s squad,” Paradiso said. “We’ve had a full year of off-season conditioning and that has made a big difference.”
The 3-0 Tigers will host Melbourne (0-4) on Friday night. That squad’s record is probably a little deceiving in that they have lost to a pair of 4-0 teams and their opponent’s overall record is 12-4. The Bulldogs have had trouble scoring points this year – averaging just over seven per game – something that has not been an issue for the Tigers.
Behind record-setting sophomore quarterback Sabby Meassick, Toho is averaging more than 40 points per game. In just 13 career games, Meassick has more than 4,300 passing yards and 57 touchdown passes. Meassick spreads the ball around as he has five receivers that have 15 or more receptions already, including juniors Julian Nasco (26-379-6 TD) and Naeem Woulard (18-343-4).
Thursday will find Liberty seeking its first win when they travel to Celebration (1-3) for a 7:30 p.m. game. Hart called last week’s 46-13 loss to Davenport a bit of a “moral victory” in that the Chargers scored more points in the game then they did in the entire 0-12 season of a year ago.
“We came in to change the attitude and culture of Liberty’s program and we knew it was not going to happen overnight,” Hart said. “But our young men have bought in to what we are trying to do and continue to play hard. It’s really uplifting when we’re watching game film of a 46-13 loss and the kids are upbeat because they can see where we could have been better. It’s a process but I am far from discouraged from the early results.”
Celebration is coming off its first win, 19-6 over Space Coast. As with the Chargers, Jeremy Palmer’s squad is extremely young and like Hart – he remains upbeat heading into Week 5.
“We’re basically playing a lot of freshman and sophomores and they are responding,” Palmer said. “It felt great to get that first win out of the way and now we have an opportunity to get another this week.”
Palmer cited the play of freshman Kobe Orr (interception return for a touchdown) and Lucas Morton-Carlson (two touchdowns, including a defensive fumble recovery for score) in the win.
Poinciana (1-2) will play twice this week. A game at Horizon was pushed to Monday by weather, with the Eagles winning 28-27. The Eagles head to Polk County to face winless Tenoroc Friday.
Also Friday, Harmony (1-2) hosts Wesley Chapel’s Wiregrass Ranch (2-1), and St. Cloud (1-2) travels to Winter Springs (0-4), where Bulldogs Coach Mike Short said he is anxious to get his team back on the field after a 41-19 setback to Tohopekaliga last week.
“They (Winter Springs) usually have three or four outstanding athletes on both sides of the ball and this year appears to be no exception,” Short said. “Our main goal this week will be to correct the mistakes we made against Toho. It may not have made a difference between a win or a loss, but we made a ton of errors last week that costs us dearly. Things like not covering on-sides kicks, not lining up correctly on defense and messing up blocking schemes. They are all things that can be corrected.”
Juniors T.J. Griffin (5.1 yards per rush) and Alex Springs (21 receptions, 284 yards, four touchdowns, two in the Tohopekaliga game) continue to produce for St. Cloud.
Thursday features three games in the county: the Celebration matchup, Ocala West Port playing Gateway (0-3) at Austin-Tindall Park and Osceola hosting regional power Rockledge (2-2); the Kowboys look to avoid their first 0-5 start since going 2-8 in 2005.
Injuries have decimated Kowboys this season, with more than a dozen expected starters missing. That has resulted in Coach Eric Pinellas having to use many sophomores that were slated for junior varsity this season. Pinellas should get some help back this week, as all-state UCF commit running back Taevion Swint is scheduled to make his 2023 debut. He missed the first three games with a pre-season knee injury and missed last week’s Lakeland game with a death in a family.
Gateway finally plays home game this week — sort of — as it will host Ocala West Port at Austin-Tindall because reconstruction is still ongoing on the Panthers’ campus.
Coach Marlin Roberts said it was a foregone conclusion that his team would struggle in a 50-0 loss to Auburndale, but said his team’s attitude remains good.
“Right now, we’re playing a lot of young guys that should be on junior varsity, but are playing varsity out of necessity. They are working extremely hard but we are simply going to be physically overmatched by most of our opponents this year,” he said.
Running backs Christian Charity and Deshawn Reese continue to be a bright spot on the team but added that freshman Christian Arroyo, a promising young wide receiver, was lost for the season with a leg injury against Auburndale. Harmony is coming off a bye week, which coach Nick Lippert said fell on a good week.
“It gave us time to heal up before we start getting into the meat of our district schedule,” the firstyear head coach said. “We had a solid week of practice. Wiregrass is physical on both sides of the line and has an outstanding quarterback in D-1 commit Lucas Knight (US Military Academy). They will present a tough challenge, but if we can keep our mistakes to a minimum I think we can be competitive with them.”
