For a school that can’t even have a 10-year class reunion yet, Strawberry Crest is having a good run in athletics.
Crest may be new to east Hillsborough, compared to schools such as Plant City, Brandon and Armwood. But in the seven years that the school’s been open, it’s managed to build some of the top high school programs in Central Florida and beyond.
Look at what girls basketball, softball, swimming, cheerleading and volleyball are doing, year in and year out: steadily contending for everything from district titles to state championships.
Heck, the cheer team is on an epic, two-year win streak for pretty much every championship confined to the state of Florida.
The wrestling program brought in the school’s other state championship last year and, beyond star sophomore Cullen Telfer, earned the respect of the area’s more established schools.
There’s certainly more to talk about than just those teams. My one regret is that, as a one-man sports department, I’m physically unable to cover everything that I want to cover every week.
But I’m not here to lament about how I can’t get to everything. I’m out here wishing that my high school experience was anything like what today’s Chargers have.
In my four years at Lake Region High, out in Eagle Lake, we didn’t make noise like that. Honestly, there are more similarities between LRHS and Durant, rather than Crest (they opened around the same time, and the baseball/softball programs were always top dog). Like Crest, LRHS was the newest school in the area. But, while I was there, many of our programs did a whole lot of nothing.
We’d developed a few good basketball players — including Florida Southern alum Kevin Capers, whom I’d love to see in the NBA soon — but never made a meaningful run.
Football never got anywhere, except for one playoff appearance in my junior year — and that was mostly because Winter Haven High had its wins vacated because of the use of ineligible players.
We nearly won a state title in baseball my senior year, and that was the closest I came to being able to say my school won a state championship while I was there.
Essentially, if you were going to a sporting event, you were doing it just to hang out with your friends somewhere other than your house. And, other than baseball games and the first two or three quarters of football games, it usually didn’t get that loud.
So, I like going to Dover when I can, stepping foot in the loudest gymnasium in east Hillsborough. I like writing about the school’s sports successes and talking to coaches that the school is lucky to have found so early into its existence.
I’m happy that you all get to enjoy the athletics while you’re working toward that diploma. Don’t take it for granted.
Contact Justin Kline at jkline@plantcityobserver.com.