The Freedom girls go over the game plan before competing last week in the Central Hillsborough County Championships. [\u00a0Photo courtesy of FREEDOM PTSA\u00a0]<\/p>\n
By JOHN C. COTEY, Tampa Bay Beacons<\/p>\n
Athlete of the week<\/p>\n
Madelyn Ammirati, Freedom: The senior Patriot topped the field last week at the Central Hillsborough Championships in a personal record-setting time.<\/p>\n
Ammirati won the girls race at Strawberry Crest in 19 minutes, 54.8 seconds, beating out second-place finisher Jade Walker of Armwood, who ran a 20:22.6.<\/p>\n
It was Ammirati\u2019s her first prep race ever breaking 20 minutes, bettering her previous career-best of 20:21 set last year at North Port.<\/p>\n
It was also almost two minutes better than her season-opening time of 21:40 at the Cecil Field Summer Classic in Jacksonville the week before.<\/p>\n
Ammirati is hoping to lead the Patriots to a third straight state championship meet appearance this season, which would extend the school record the team has set the past two seasons.<\/p>\n
She was joined in the top 10 by her teammates, junior Sophia Douglas (fourth) and sophomore Tesla Novello, who was seventh.<\/p>\n
The Freedom cross country program hit a major milestone last week when Madelyn Ammirati won the Central Hillsborough County Championship for the girls. [\u00a0Photo courtesy of FREEDOM PTSA\u00a0]<\/p>\n
Team of the week<\/p>\n
If Ammirati\u2019s individual title was good enough for Player of the Week, then let\u2019s hand the Wharton boys the team of the week award, for winning the same meet.<\/p>\n
The Wildcats rode four top 10 finishes \u2014 Derek Cook (second), Grady Toohey (seventh), Naveen Andrews (eighth) and Dylan Wimbley (ninth) to 30 points, tying Strawberry Crest. But the Wildcats had the smaller spread, just 59 seconds, between Cook\u2019s time of 17:49.63 and the No. 5 scorer (Christian Wimbley\u2019s 18:49.51) than Strawberry Crest\u2019s 2:41 gap between its No. 1 and No. 5 finisher.<\/p>\n
Still cooking<\/p>\n
Wharton\u2019s volleyball team won both its matches last week, beating Steinbrenner and Sickles to improve to 5-0, the program\u2019s best start since the 2019 team started out 8-0.<\/p>\n
And the win over Steinbrenner was significant. Back when Plant was the longtime thorn in Wharton\u2019s side, Steinbrenner was the mini-thorn and had beaten Wharton four straight times dating to 2019 before last week\u2019s Wildcat victory.<\/p>\n
Against the Warriors, senior outside hitter Amia Kennerdy led the way with 19 kills on a 61.3 hitting percentage, with sophomore setter Zoe Ananga adding 44 assists and sophomore Layla Petschel chipping in 17 digs and four aces.<\/p>\n
Patriots hit bump \u2026 twice<\/p>\n
Freedom\u2019s volleyball team dropped a pair of 3-1 matches to Bloomingdale and Newsome last week, falling to 2-2 on the season.<\/p>\n
By the numbers<\/p>\n
96 \u2014 Points scored by Wharton football through the first two weeks.<\/p>\n
9 \u2014 Passing and rushing touchdowns for Wharton quarterback Ty Nesmith through two games.<\/p>\n
44 \u2014 Assists by Zoe Ananga in a win over Steinbrenner, the most by a Wharton setter since Danielle Galfond had 49 in a playoff loss to Fort Meyers in 2023.<\/p>\n
Check it out<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t want to spend your hot Friday night watching a high school football game? Well, then have we got a deal for you \u2014 Wharton hosts Sunlake in their Class 5A, District 7 opener on Thursday, Sept. 10. The Wildcats could be going for its first 4-0 start since 2021.<\/p>\n
Have news? Milestones? Heroic performances? Contact John C. Cotey at jcotey@tampabeacon.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Freedom girls go over the game plan before competing last week in the Central Hillsborough County Championships.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":392760,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[135,137,136],"class_list":["post-392759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=392759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392759\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/392760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=392759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=392759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=392759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}