Ten seasons, five head coaches, three athletic directors and two principals ago, Plant City High School’s football program committed to change. Head coach Jason Strunk wanted to give the school’s football facilities major updates, from new turf on the field and a Lakeland High School-esque scoreboard, to a field house overhaul with a new equipment room and weight room.
Though some changes were made, other projects thought of back then are still in limbo. The funding to help Plant City’s facilities compete with the best in Hillsborough County is not there, but there is hope within the football program for that to change in due time.
Equipment manager Roy Schmidberger, now in his 10th season with the team, stays busy taking care of the team’s needs already. He keeps the fields in good shape, procures, cleans and repairs gear, maintains the facilities and handles any other projects he’s asked to work on. Known as “Coach Schmiddy” by virtually everyone involved with the football program, he has had as much a hand as anybody in bringing the Raiders’ facilities to where they are now and he doesn’t expect to stop working toward Strunk’s visions anytime soon.
“I think once we get there,” Schmidberger said, “this place could be a powerhouse.”
The Raiders’ facilities have come a long way in Schmidberger’s time with the team, though. It began with Strunk’s request to furnish the coaches’ areas with cabinets and other furniture it didn’t already have, painted floors and other overhaul in the locker areas. The team’s uniform inventory system was redone to salvage gear for the future, as Schmidberger said there was initially a problem with players taking their team-issued helmets and gear home at the end of the season. He also did the team’s laundry at the dry-cleaning business he owned until the school installed a washer and dryer.
“It started to come together then,” he said.
Subsequent coaches kept building on the plans after Strunk left for another coaching job. Schmidberger and Wayne Ward implemented things to help the team form a stronger identity within the field house. They painted a team logo in the center of the varsity locker room, which no one is allowed to step on, in 2012. They added a “Wall of Fame” just inside the varsity locker room’s doorway, highlighting Raiders who have gone on to play college ball and, in Markese Hargrove’s case, won the coveted Guy Toph Award. They added a wall to honor players who died during or shortly after they played for the team, framing their jerseys in shadow boxes and destroying the other jerseys of those numbers before officially retiring them. In Greg Meyer’s year as head coach, Schmidberger was able to get enough volunteer help and funding to keep the Raiders’ flag logo painted on the field each week, a five-hour process that was completed every Thursday.
Since then, both volunteer numbers and program funds have dwindled. Schmidberger said he hopes to see both numbers increase in time but knows that that will probably only happen when boosters are sure they’ll have a coach in place for the long haul. He believes James Booth could be that coach, and the two are already working on a secret project for the players that will likely be realized next year. It may not be a new scoreboard, but he expects everything from this point forward to be a step in the right direction.
“Hopefully, with (Booth) being here, we’ll be able to bring it to what Strunk visualized,” Schmidberger said.