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Figure skating heats up in Wesley Chapel

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As Tampa Bay becomes synonymous with hockey this time of year, another ice-based sport is heating up in the region.

For the first time, the Florida Sports Foundation selected Pasco County to be the host community for the annual Sunshine State Games Figure Skating Championships.

The competition took place at Florida Hospital Center Ice in Wesley Chapel, from May 18 through May 20.

The games drew more than 300 male and female skaters of all ages, with skaters and their families trekking all the way from the First Coast to South Florida, and everywhere in-between, to compete in the statewide, Olympic-style program.

The majority of the participants were girls between the ages of 10 to 14.

Ten-year-old Jordan Scott, of Wesley Chapel, won the juvenile girls free skate event and was a recipient of the Betty Stark Award as the games’ top juvenile skater.

Skating sisters shine
A pair of young sisters from Wesley Chapel fared among the best.

Twelve-year-old Haley Scott and 10-year-old Jordan Scott each earned gold medals in their respective competitions.

Haley won the novice ladies division with a personal-best in the free skate (84.96 total score).

Jordan, meanwhile, won the juvenile girls free skate event (48.75 score) and was a recipient of the Betty Stark Award as the games’ top juvenile skater.

Haley won the same award back in 2016 for first-place finishes in the juvenile girls free skate and intermediate ladies short events.

She also won the games’ Dorothy Dodson Award in 2017, named after the late long-time figure skating judge that recognizes the highest combined score in the intermediate ladies free skating and short program events.

The success in Florida has translated to the national stage, for Haley.

Between October and January, she skated in the South Atlantic Regional Championships in Ashburn, Virginia (second place, Intermediate Ladies); the Eastern Sectional Championships in Foxborough, Massachusetts (second place, Intermediate Ladies); and in the 2018 Prudential U.S. Figure Skating Championships in San Jose, California (10th place Intermediate Ladies).

Twelve-year-old Haley Scott, of Wesley Chapel, won the novice ladies division with a personal-best in the free skate (84.96 total score). Her younger sister, Jordan Scott, 10, also earned a gold medal in the juvenile free skate. (Courtesy of Julie Scott)

But, her proudest skating moment came the year before, when she earned a bronze medal in the juvenile girls division at the 2017 Prudential U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Kansas City, Missouri.

Ranked among the nation’s top young figure skaters, the Olympics may be a reality someday.

“My goal is just to keep having fun, keep pushing to my potential, just enjoying the journey,” she said. “The Olympics would be great.”

The Scott sisters have each been skating for about six years, when they first tried it out at a friend’s birthday party.

They’ve been hooked ever since.

“I like the challenge of it. Each day you get to do something new and try to push yourself,” Haley said.

Added Jordan: “I also love competing. It’s really fun to ice skate.”

In the juvenile division, figure skater Kaitlyn Wright, 6, left, talks with friend, Briana Reich, 7, of Wellington. The two girls are coached by Lauren Salzlechner, also of Wellington. Wright and her family may be moving to Wesley Chapel in order to live near Florida Hospital Center Ice. (Fred Bellet)

A convenient training ground
The skating wunderkinds, along with their mother Julie Scott, moved to Wesley Chapel from Port Orange, chiefly for the offerings at Florida Hospital Center Ice.

Labeled the largest ice sports facility in the Southeastern U.S., the 150,500-square-foot, two-story complex features five ice rinks — an Olympic rink (200 feet by 100 feet), three National Hockey League-sized rinks (200 feet by 85 feet) and a mini rink.

While living in Port Orange, the family would commute three hours everyday to a skating facility in Jacksonville.

They made the daily drive for about four years, until Florida Hospital Center Ice launched in January 2017.

Now they’re just minutes away from sheets of ice.

“This facility is probably the best in the southeast right now. It really is. You really can’t beat it,” Julie Scott said.

The Scott sisters, who are home-schooled, use the Wesley Chapel facility about six days a week for practice and training. Their team of coaches is also stationed there.

“They’ve got ballet here. They’ve got yoga. They have it all. They have a trainer. It’s all in-house, which is really nice,” their mother said.

Other skating families are relocating to Wesley Chapel to access those opportunities.

Josh and Marissa Wright and their two children soon plan to move to the area from Boynton Beach. They want to be within a 15-minute drive of Center Ice.

They recently made the 3 ½-hour drive from South Florida so their 6-year-old daughter, Kaitlyn, could participate in the games’ basic series event.

When Josh first toured the facility, he was awestruck with the complex located off Interstate 75 at the State Road 56 interchange.

“It’s amazing. It’s unbelievable. I mean, there’s nothing like this,” he said, adding the facility his family currently uses only has one rink.

Florida’s figure skating surge
The first Sunshine State Games Figure Skating Championships began 32 years ago in Clearwater with less than 60 skaters.

It’s grown nearly fivefold since, and has been hosted at several other locations over the years, including Tampa, Ellenton, Jacksonville and West Palm Beach, among others.

Twelve-year-old Avery Kelley and her coach, Steve Belanger, both of Jupiter, made the trip to the annual Sunshine State Games Figure Skating Championships at Florida Hospital Center Ice in Wesley Chapel. Kelley, a competitor in the intermediate division, skates with “elegance and poise,” according to her coach. (Fred Bellet)

Betty Stark has served as the games’ figure skating director since its inception.

She said it’s “a good tune-up” for skaters with aspirations of reaching qualifying competitions, like regionals and sectionals, later in the year.

“A lot of the kids that participate in the Sunshine State Games get the opportunity, if they place, to go on to the State Games of America,” she said, noting several homegrown skaters have wound up competing nationally and internationally.

Stark, a former club figure skater herself at the University of Florida, has also witnessed the sport’s surge in the state across the past three decades.

“It’s been taking off a lot.” she said. “The number of rinks and the interest in figure skating has increased a lot. Coaches have been coming down here starting up programs. Guests coaches from across the country love to come down for the warm weather…and some of them just wind up staying here; and they bring their expertise from their years of skating and their coaching.”

Meantime, the figure skating event may remain here for the foreseeable future.

Pasco County Tourism Manager Consuelo Sanchez said the county plans to bid to keep the state games in Wesley Chapel for the next few years.

“We are interested to keep it here because it is the most important (figure skating) competition in the whole state of Florida,” she said.

Further, the event may be a springboard for drawing even larger figure skating competitions at Florida Hospital Center Ice.

“The good thing about bringing the Sunshine Games is we’re going to show that we can host big events,” Sanchez said.

“We’re already having conversations with USA Figure Skating to try and bring regionals and, hopefully, national championships here. But, they wanted to see that we have the capability of hosting these events, and this is a great experience.”

The facility is already no stranger to the big stage.

It was the training home for the USA Hockey Women’s National Team that won gold in the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

It has also hosted multiple National USA Hockey championships and is the training home for international athletes — including six-time French national champion figure skating pair Vanessa James and Morgan Cipres.

And, it’s bucking the notion that ice sports are reserved for northern states and colder climates.

Said Julie Scott, “Everybody always asks us, ‘Why ice skating in Florida?’ But, why not? You’ve got these great facilities.”

Published June 6, 2018

Converting caps into love, through service project

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The culmination of donations over eight months was quite a sight at Saint Leo University recently.

Dozens of students, faculty and staff gathered on April 18 at the university’s northeast campus parking lot to witness 14 pallets — containing 8,000 pounds of plastic bottle caps — being loaded onto a 53-foot trailer, and sent to Bluegrass Recycling in Kentucky.

This school year, the university collaborated with Caps of Love, a Florida-based, nonprofit organization that recycles three grades of plastic caps and lids that are sold to the Kentucky-based recycling company.

All proceeds from the recycling are used to purchase new and refurbished wheelchairs that are donated to children in the United States with mobility disabilities.

(Kevin Weiss/Staff Photo) Students gather to see pallets full of bottle caps loaded onto a 53-foot truck that will send them to a recycling center in Kentucky. They have been collecting caps since August.
Students gather to see pallets full of bottle caps loaded onto a 53-foot truck that will send them to a recycling center in Kentucky. They have been collecting caps since August. (Kevin Weiss/Staff Photo)

Since 2014, Caps of Love has provided 32 wheelchairs to people under the age of 21, that are in need.

The charitable organization was founded over nine years ago by Valerie Mathieu of West Palm Beach, and it received its 501 (c) (3) status about four years ago.

After learning about a similar charity overseas, Mathieu figured she’d bring the program to the U.S. She was impressed by both its environmental and humanitarian components.

“It’s primarily an environmental charity and educating children on how to recycle properly—how to identify what is recyclable,” Mathieu said. “Our country is not really good at recycling, so this is an easy way to learn how to recycle and identify the different grades of plastic. …At the same time, we have the humanitarian side where we’re providing wheelchairs for handicapped children in the U.S.”

With many wheelchairs ranging from $5,000 to well over $22,000, the expense is often a financial burden for families with special needs children, Mathieu said.

“Insurance gives them a basic wheelchair, and they only receive wheelchairs every couple of years, so they outgrow it, and it’s up to the parents to just purchase a new one,” Mathieu said, noting her organization will soon give out 70 more wheelchairs. ”We also have a lot of families in this country that do not have insurance, and their children do not get wheelchairs, so that’s where we come in,” Mathieu said.

The program’s simplicity and purpose made it an ideal fit for the university to participate in the philanthropy project, satisfying its ‘community’ core value, said Heidi D’ Ambrosio, senior coordinator for Residence Life.

“We’d have competitions at the (residence) halls of who could collect the most caps,” D’ Ambrosio said. “We’d have sorting events, and we’d spend hours sorting them, because they have to be in three different grades.”

The three grades of plastic caps they recycled were polypropylene No. 5, and polyethylene No. 2 and No. 4 plastic caps, which are valuable in bulk.

“The most important thing is getting the three different grades collected correctly,” Mathieu said. “All three grades have about the same value and are sold by the pound, but when they’re mixed together, they have no value.”

With over 14 collection sites throughout the Saint Leo campus, the program quickly spread through word of mouth, as Greek Life organizations and student affairs staff members got involved.

“It (became) a constant thing that when you have a bottle cap, you put it in the basket,” said Ashley Montas, a freshman criminal justice major. “It’s pretty easy.”

Ryliegh D’ Ambrosio, a freshman psychology major, said the program helped unite the university.

“I feel that it brought sororities and (other) departments all together on campus for a good cause,” she said. “I didn’t realize how many (caps) it was until we finished.”

Community service hours were calculated based on the number of caps brought in. For example, if a student brought in 100 caps, they were rewarded with one service hour, and if they brought in 200 caps, they received two service hours.

“We’d like to continue this because we have so many people now that want to get involved with it,” D’ Ambrosio said.

For more information about Caps of Love, visit CapsOfLove.com.

Published April 27, 2016

RaceWay location in Dade City sold

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After more than 15 years of corporate ownership, RaceTrac Petroleum Inc. has sold its Dade City RaceWay location for $2.3 million.

The buyer of the station, located on a little more than an acre of land at 12310 U.S. 301, is 974 Pasco LLC, managed by West Palm Beach attorney Carolyn Sakolsky. The location was built in 2004 on land RaceTrac purchased in 1999 for $263,000. The land was originally owned by Bobby and Dorothy Baker of Zephyrhills.

It’s not clear if the sale of the property will affect the location in any way. A request for comment from the Atlanta-based RaceWay was pending return.

However, there is a chance the RaceWay might have sold to a franchisee. According to the company’s website, locations owned by corporate use the name RaceTrac, while those owned by franchisees are called RaceWay.

RaceWay was founded in 1934 in St. Louis as the Carl Bolch Trackside Stations. The company’s goal was to remain independent of the major oil companies, according to the company’s website.

Carl Bolch acquired the Oil Well Co. of Opp, Alabama, in 1959, and started to rapidly expand across the south beginning in the late 1960s. The RaceTrac name was adopted in 1979.

 

Exotic pets looking for homes, too, through amnesty program

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Ever wanted to replace the traditional dog or cat, with a blue-tongued skink, or a green anaconda?

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is looking for qualified people willing to adopt exotic pets through its Exotic Pet Amnesty Program.

These pets need new homes because owners who can no longer care for them have surrendered them to the state. New owners will need to understand the costs associated with taking care of such an animal, as well as the natural history, care and safe caging requirements for the pets.

“It’s a great way to help prevent the release of non-natives, while providing these pets a home where they will be properly cared for and safely caged,” said Liz Barraco, coordinator of the amnesty program, in a release.

Without the amnesty program, many of these animals would be released into the wild. And because they are not part of the existing natural food chain, they could disrupt habitats, and even pose a danger to people.

The application process to adopt is done in two parts — the first will help someone become an approved adopter, while the second identifies that person’s experience and knowledge regarding a specific type of exotic pet.

“People considering taking one of these animals home need to think about the level of responsibility and long-term commitment involved,” Barraco said. “Many exotic pets live for a long time, and some get quite big.”

The amnesty days allow current exotic pet owners to bring in their animals without a fee or penalty. Those wanting to adopt don’t have to pay a fee, either, but they would need to be pre-qualified before attending one of three upcoming events around the state.

The first is Oct. 4 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., at Dreher Park Garden Club, 4800 Dreher Trail North, in West Palm Beach. The second is Nov. 15 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., at North Collier Regional Park, 15000 Livingston Road, in Naples.

The third is April 11 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., at Wickham Park Pavilion, 3845 N. Wickham Road, in Melbourne.

Veterinarians examine each surrendered pet, and every attempt is made to place healthy animals with qualified adopters, officials said. Also, live animals will be on display at the events, which are open to the public, and experts will be available to talk to people about proper care of the pets.

Those who can’t attend an amnesty event, but would like to join the ongoing registry to become a potential new owner of an exotic pet, can visit MyFWC.com/Nonnatives to learn more about the program, and how to become an exotic pet owner.

Florida continues to add to open job listings

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A growing national economy continues to trickle down to the state level as the number of job openings in Florida grew nearly 5 percent in August.

The Florida Department of Economic Opportunity says 11,899 more job openings were reported in the state last month, up 4.6 percent from July. That brings the total number of seasonally adjusted job openings to a little more than 273,000, which includes a 4.3 percent boost in online job openings.

“August was another strong month for job demand in Florida — just one of the many indicators showing the positive turnaround in Florida’s economy over the last few years,” said Jesse Panuccio, executive director of the state’s economic opportunity department, in a release. “Job demand is growing, and Florida families are getting back to work.”

That growth was led by Miami, Tampa, Orlando, Jacksonville and Fort Lauderdale. West Palm Beach had the largest growth year-over-year with 23.7 percent growth.

The most popular job openings in August were sales, office and administrative, support, health care practitioners, and management, the state department said.

Gas prices still climbing … thanks to Russia?

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A gallon of gas in the greater Tampa Bay area is 8 cents more expensive than it was a month ago, and at least part of the blame can land at the feet of Vladimir Putin.

Auto club group AAA says gas prices in the state are at their highest level since last September — $3.56 in Florida, and $3.49 locally — because of shorter supplies of ethanol and continued tension in Europe between Russia and the Ukraine.

“When there is no ethanol blend in the gasoline, you could see the price of gas increase,” said Mark Jenkins, AAA spokesman, in a release. “That is because a higher costing product, premium gasoline, is being used to increase the octane level.”

Gas prices in most areas of Florida can contain as much as 10 percent ethanol, which helps keep prices down but octane levels where they need to be. When ethanol is in short supply, petroleum companies instead have to use more expensive gasoline to make a blend that remains at 87-octane grade material, according to the Oil Price Information Service.

On top of that, tensions in the Ukraine could disrupt supply that runs through and from the country, which could cause prices to spike.

Gasoline prices have remained mostly steady over the past week, and is still cheaper than the $3.59 per gallon reported a year ago. The highest gas has ever been was in July 2008 when regular unleaded topped $4.

Diesel has remained steady over the past year, currently at $4.05 per gallon, compared to $4.03 in March 2013. Its highest price was $4.82, also in July 2008.

But there is good news on the horizon. Although there is the potential that gas could climb another 20 cents per gallon in the coming weeks nationally, it is expected to start falling as April continues on. That will especially be the case when gas stations switch over to its summer blend gasoline May 1.

Prices in March typically climb 20 cents during March, but so far this year, that average has been 8 cents nationwide. AAA says it’s not expecting prices to finish as high as they were last year.

The most expensive gas in Florida is in West Palm Beach where prices are $3.67 per gallon. The cheapest is in Tallahassee at $3.45 for regular unleaded.