The Season “Hoosiers” Came To South Tampa

When Plant High School won its 4-A state championship game against defending champ Ponte Vedra Beach Nease two Saturdays ago, it was the first state football championship for a Tampa team since Richard Nixon was a rookie president.

But this wasn’t just a long-awaited win for a Tampa team. It was also an urban “Hoosiers,” a feel-good, vicarious victory for the tight-knit, small-city community within the city that is South Tampa. And it was a well-savored triumph over a stubborn stereotype.

Look at the Plant student parking lot sometime, and you’re reminded that there is affluence here. Look at the higher education track record of its grads, and you’re reminded that academics have always been paramount.

And if you looked at the football team a few years ago, you were reminded that the Plant kids were considered too “soft” to be good at a tough, physically demanding, non-country club sport.

Well, so much for that myth. You don’t even get out of Hillsborough County without being tough enough – let alone skilled enough.

To Plant’s everlasting credit – and the stuff that legacies are made of – the (15-0) Panthers didn’t just run the table in a fanatical football state full of blue-chip college prospects and high-powered programs. They won with class.

No prima donna attitudes and no strutting, “look-at-me” boors. No recruiting, “remuneration” or criminality scandals. No marginal, athlete-luring magnets.

Just a bunch of talented, hard-nosed kids that bought into a philosophy and a value system. The one embraced and embodied by Robert Weiner, 42, the third-year head coach.

Weiner, the long-time Jesuit assistant who had been passed over for the JHS head-coaching job, is known for his uber organizational and motivational skills.

Nobody, he preaches, transcends team. Nothing is more important than loyalty and hard work. Everyone’s contribution – from All Everything, record-setting quarterback Robert Marve to kids whose roles are relegated to the practice fields – is valued and acknowledged.

Weiner’s a disciplinarian and demands that his players improve – on the field, in the classroom and in the community. And he doesn’t just talk a good game; he’s been a counselor at Muscular Dystrophy camp for more than 25 years.

Moreover, Weiner is the perfect role model for impressionable student-athletes. He didn’t let the Jesuit disappointment deter or discourage him. He’s Exhibit A for academic and athletic priorities – in that order. He’s an English teacher/coach. One who writes poetry and can quote Thoreau, Shakespeare or Dylan more readily than Lombardi, Rockne or Paterno.

One who made his players believe they weren’t soft. Who instilled a sense that life was not a spectator sport nor meant to be taken for granted. Who was father figure, big brother, favorite uncle and unabashed humanitarian.

And, lest we forget, one who provided a South Tampa community with its own Hoosiers-like rallying cry, focus of pride and storybook ride for the ages.

Panthers rule.

The “R” Word

The word is “resegregation,” and we’ve been seeing it more and more, often in bold headlines. It has most recently surfaced in the run up to the U.S. Supreme Court’s eventual decision on the merits of suits filed on behalf of parents challenging efforts to keep schools racially balanced in the school districts of Louisville and Seattle.

“Resegregation” is front and center because — absent racial “guidelines” — serious integration just can’t happen in many school districts.

And that’s cause for alarm in some circles – ranging from liberal media to civil rights’ careerists. To them, “resegregation” is an affront to the desegregation legacy of Brown v. Board of Education. That historic 1954 decision is mocked, goes the reasoning, by all the school districts, including Hillsborough County’s, that no longer — in this post court-order era — have race ratios for their schools.

And, as a result, there are lots of schools, including a number in Hillsborough County, with predominantly minority enrollments. This, of course, is considered very bad in the aforementioned circles.

And not even gimmick magnet and “choice” programs have been able to dent, much less deter, this ostensibly insidious pattern of “resegregation.”

If ever a non-N-word needed context, it’s “resegregation.”

The very evil that was “segregation” was premised on legally codified racial inferiority. We’re talking about the morally indefensible here – and the malevolent Jim Crow extension of the Plessy v. Ferguson legacy.

No one’s re-upping for that any more than they’re waxing nostalgic for the auction block. But the knee-jerk acceptance of “resegregation” as an implicit, racist return to segregated schools circa 1950s is out of synch with reality circa 2006. Tampa’s Leto High, for example, is not Little Rock’s Central High – any more than color-blind decisions are the same as color-coded laws.

If anything, the post court-order era is an opportunity.

An opportunity to transcend quotas, social engineering and unwieldy, cost-inefficient logistics. An opportunity to halt the blatantly insulting racism that says, in effect, that quality education is incompatible with schools sporting predominantly minority enrollments. It’s still a truism that no one can make you feel inferior without your cooperation.

And an opportunity to return to meaningful neighborhood schools, where a community rallies around its own and parents are able to be more involved.

How ironic that Brown v. Board involved a black student who couldn’t go to her preferred school – one that was actually closest – because she was the wrong color.

Bowling For Also-rans

Remember when bowl games were a combination chamber of commerce coup and reward for teams with successful seasons? There were only a handful of bowls and you could know them all. Now there are 32, including Poinsettia, Popajohns.com, Insight, Meineke Car Care, Music City, Champs Sports, MPC Computers and GMAC Bowls.

That means 64 teams. How do you choose 64 deserving teams? You don’t.

In fact, there are no fewer than seven teams, including (6-6) Miami and (6-6) Florida State, who have to win their bowl game just to avoid a losing season. There’s even a bowl game, the Independence in Shreveport, La., where neither team (Oklahoma State and Alabama) enters with a winning record.

While going “Bowling” has certainly lost much of its luster, imagine how it looks to go uninvited to one.

Grad Rates

The BCS Championship game is still more than a fortnight away, but already the University of Florida has topped Ohio State – where it should count more: graduation rates.

The University of Central Florida-based Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport has accumulated graduation data on all teams participating in this year’s bowl games.

The overall rate for student-athletes playing football at OSU was 55 percent, including 32 percent for black players. Corresponding numbers for UF: 80 and 74.

Here’s how some other bowl-bound schools fared:

*Notre Dame: 95 and 90/ LSU: 49 and 37

*Navy: 98 and 91/ Boston College: 96 and 93

*Penn State: 80 and 77/ Tennessee: 58 and 47

*Miami: 68 and 63/ Nevada: 53 and 36

*UCLA: 59 and 39/ Florida State: 52 and 48

*E. Carolina: 78 and 76/ USF: 66 and 67.

And the numbers for defending national champion Texas? Try 40 and 33. Speaks volumes, doesn’t it?

To Revel With A Cause: Nostalgia Lives Here

The other day a friend, retired educator Boston Bob Norton, had one of those milestone birthdays – the kind that reflectively kicks off a new decade. He celebrated by recovering nicely from a gall bladder operation and immersing himself in the decade – the 1950s – in which he came of age.

He had help – including a disk-jockey with vintage, time-warp music. There were also a few evocative words from a guy from Philadelphia who grew up on doo-wop music and actually went to Bandstand. He took time out from waxing on about a military draft, hoping a new art museum wouldn’t be a neo-edgy, Frank Lloyd Wrong misfit and wondering if this is the year the county commission concedes the role of a hub city. He took the time to revel with a cause – nostalgia.

To give nostalgia its due requires a selective memory. In this case, it means forgetting about cramming for a trig test, squeezing a combative zit, recoiling from romantic rejection or explaining much of anything to your parents. Sure, your folks couldn’t fathom Clarence “Frogman” Henry and loathed Jerry Lee Lewis even before he married his 13-year-old cousin. And come to think of it, they always seemed like they wanted a son more like David Nelson, Ricky’s maturely dull sibling.

It was also an era when “Mashed Potato Time” incongruously meant burning off calories and “Get A Job” wasn’t merely a parental directive. It was a time when performers had colorful, wonderfully corny – almost chummy – names such as Fats Domino and Chubby Checker. Wonder was, there was never a Pudgy Parcheesi.

But going from Wally Cleaver to Eldridge Cleaver was an extraordinary societal transition and a unique American epoch. The hot flash crowd remembers the Cold War insecurities and sanctuaries. A-bomb drills and spelling bees. Fall-out shelters and push-up bras. Sputnik hype and sock hops. Edgar Bergen and Joe McCarthy. The Red menace and Red Skelton.

Let’s focus on a year. It’s 1959.

Dwight Eisenhower is president. Nikita Khrushchev visits the U.S. Fidel Castro takes over in Cuba. Hawaii becomes the 50th state. Vance Packard writes “The Status Seekers.” The big movies are “Ben Hur” and “La Dolce Vita.” Ingemar Johansson pummels Floyd Patterson to win the World Heavyweight Championship. The Dodgers — the Los Angeles Dodgers — defeat the Chicago White Sox of Al Lopez to win the World Series. The Baltimore Colts down the New York Giants for the NFL championship – and the 1st Super Bowl is still seven years away.

The top pop song is Bobby Darin’s “Mack The Knife” — which gives a lot of parents hope that all is not lost with the frantic likes of Little Richard and the aforementioned “Killer,” Jerry Lee Lewis. And while Philadelphia mourns the passing of Mario Lanza, South Philly’s Bobby Ridarelli, Frankie Avallone and Fabian Forte carry on the city’s crooning tradition.

Bandstand pilgrimage

It was also the year a group of 8th grade buddies (practically high school freshmen) at St. Timothy’s School in northeast Philadelphia decided to take advantage of a Catholic School holiday. We put on sport coats and ties (with tie pins); caught a bus; and took the cross-town elevated train to the nether world of West Philadelphia – home to famous, super popular, bigger-than-life Bandstand.

We arrived unfashionably early – the way tourists and nerds do – and queued up near the front of the line outside the WFIL, ABC-affiliate studio, a shockingly nondescript building in a hardscrabble neighborhood and just hoped to look 14 – and make the high-school cut. The regulars, of course, didn’t have to suffer such an indignity. They were ushered right in – after signing autographs. For the tourists.

Well, we all passed muster and were directed to the bleacher seats in a room that seemed about the size of a basketball half court. Along the way there were hand-written signs cautioning the uninitiated: proper attire required; ID might be checked; gum-chewing, loud talking and camera-hogging prohibited.

Some associate producer sort came out to reinforce the signage for the benefit of rookies and also stressed the proper, seemingly obvious, response to the flashing applause signs. The regulars talked among themselves.

This guy’s message was clear. In fact, it was brutally, condescendingly clear. In effect, he was saying: “Millions of teenagers across the country will be tuning in today – but NOT to watch you. They want to see Justine Carelli, Bob Clayton, Pat Moliteri, Carmen Jimenez, Kenny Rossi and Arlene Sullivan.

“If you MUST dance, please stay with the counter-clockwise flow and don’t look, let alone WAVE, at the camera. Try to look cool, even though we know and you know – you’re not. Central Casting didn’t send you to us, but we still let you in. Don’t make us throw you out

Bowling: A Striking Success For Team-Building

Stop in at Channelside’s Splitsville some evening — preferably Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday – between, say, 5 and 8 p.m. And sure enough, there they are: the after-work, Happy Hour crowd winding down over gourmet pizza and Cosmopolitans.

But look a little further. It’s more than urban pioneers and swigging singles.

See who’s using a third of the dozen retro-style lanes in this contemporary bowling alley/modern bar hybrid. The strikes, spares and gutter balls are rolling off the hands of employees on a mission. A team-building mission underwritten by employers ranging from Raymond James & Associates and Numara Software Inc. to WellCare Health Plan and Kforce Professional Staffing. “The Big Lebowski” as corporate chic.

“Team building was really big in the 1980s, then it leveled off for a while,” points out Deirdre Dixon, Program Director of the TECO Energy Center for Leadership at the University of Tampa. “Now it’s back in the forefront again.”

In many companies, team-building has become embedded in the culture. It’s a way of assuring that fiefdom-like business units and insulated departments actually come in contact with each other. There’s nothing bad about good morale.

“We want to knock down some of these (personnel) silos that inevitably build,” says Tony Thomas, Numara’s product manager. “Once you get in a comfort zone, it’s easier to communicate, to ask questions.”

These days, facilitating such goals entails a lot more than choosing between Outward Bound and tug-of-war. “Right now interactive places such as Splitsville and Disney Quest are very popular because they involve individuals as a group and allow them to work together for a visual goal and have fun while doing it,” says Vanessa Daniel, Training Operations Coordinator for Kforce.

“In today’s world, everybody wants a good, cohesive team at the top of their game — whatever the endeavor,” adds UT’s Dixon. Team-building exercises – ranging from sailing, drumming, rock climbing and bowling to volley ball, video games and scavenger hunts — help to develop a “more synergistic operation” and provide opportunities to use the “diversity of the whole team.

“Companies, quite understandably, want to ensure that they are getting the most from their employees,” underscores Dixon.

Splitsville owner Guy Revelle is certainly seeing the payoff. Splitsville realizes nearly 25 per cent of its overall sales from team-building events. That’s 40-50 per month.

Nothing about bowling for the bottom line surprises Revelle. The sport, he maintains, is the most egalitarian of all team-building activities. Skill isn’t a requisite, and it’s gender friendly. For example, golf, 5-k runs and even office foosball – all team-building staples – still require talent, endurance and dexterity.

“Bowling has been around forever and is something that almost everyone can do,” explains Revelle. “I mean, even if you’re not any good, it’s still fun. In bowling, the receptionist may be better than the president.”

To Numara’s Tony Thomas, the real fun is in the fundamentals. As in return on investment. What happens in the alleys doesn’t stay in the alleys.

“We do see the benefits,” says Thomas. “Building camaraderie and synergy is important. And with bowling, you don’t have to be an athlete; it appeals to multiple age groups; and it lends itself to teams.

“Even the heckling is fun.”

Balance From A Bull Basher

Let’s be fair. A lot of us in the media, including this columnist, have taken our shots at Jim Leavitt, head football coach of the USF Bulls. He was becoming decreasingly accessible and increasingly testy. And he seemed to have more than his share of student-athlete eligibility issues.

But let’s also acknowledge this.

Leavitt turned a daunting assignment into a challenge he met head on. Sometimes — at half time — literally.

He continues to exceed expectations on the field with a program barely a decade old. He has neither the tradition nor the budget of many opponents. Yet the Bulls are already a solid Big East team with on-the-field parity among the Pittsburghs, Syracuses, Louisvilles and West Virginias. This was, of course, dramatically underscored by that stunning, nationally noted 24-19 road win against No. 7 West Virginia.

USF now goes to its second bowl game in as many years – and notice has been served to the rest of this football-crazed state that USF is a player pushing peer status with the “Big 3” – Florida State, Florida and Miami. In the Associated Press poll, USF is tied for 29th with Penn State and a couple of spots in front of Steve Spurrier’s South Carolina Gamecocks.

And USF is top heavy in underclassmen. Next year the Bulls should be even better.

And what shouldn’t be downplayed is the impact of football not only on USF, a “commuter school” that had long craved such a high-profile, rally-around forum and identity enhancer, but on the Tampa Bay area itself. Winners perforce showcase their home base.

Leavitt’s emotional, post-game TV interview after the WVU upset was illustrative. The historic win, he said through misty eyes and a compromised voice, wasn’t just special for the players and the university, but for “St. Pete and Tampa.”

It was revealing. Touching – not testy.

The Trite Stuff

Amusing, on-point editorial the other day in the Tampa Tribune on clichés and hackneyed filler phrases favored by too many politicians and business leaders. It nailed some of the most irksome parlance polluters such as “wake-up calls,” “at the end of the day,” “going forward,” “it goes without saying” and “it’s not rocket science.”

But let’s not end there, lest we be accused of not thinking far enough outside the (platitude) box. There are cash cows to be milked, Kool-Aid to be drunk and pockets to be, well, out of. Doubtless, it doesn’t get much more lame than walking the walk, more unnerving than ignoring that 800-pound gorilla, more candid than owning up to whose court the ball is in and more prioritizing than grabbing all that low-hanging fruit.

And sometimes it just takes a world-class effort to avoid pro-active, hands-on envelope-pushing. The result: either a win-win situation or everything ass backwards.

But in all honesty, will any of this cutting-edge, linguistic introspection help – let alone generate traction?

Obviously, that remains to be seen.

Rice For President

For anyone running for president in 2008, the signs would typically be manifest by now. Parade Magazine references. Appearances on Sunday morning and late-night talk shows. Middle East travel. Encouraging Quinnipiac University poll numbers.

And a web site with lots of stuff for sale.

Obviously, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice must be in the hunt.

To be sure, there’s the Condi Rice for President 08 web site. But there’s much more than the requisite buttons, magnets, mugs, mouse pads and bumper stickers for sale. There’s also (honest) the Condi Rice for President 08 “Classic Thong” ($12.99), boxers ($18.99), trucker hat ($16.99), Christmas ornament ($9.99 – round or oval), infant creeper ($15.99) and dog tee-shirt ($19.99).

With free holiday shipping.

Back To The Future: House Calls

For Gale Pippin, taking her 14-year-old Yellow Lab to the veterinarian had become a Sisyphean task. The car ride had morphed into the transit from hell with a large, stressed-out dog. Then the tell-tale smell of a vet office terrified him.

Moreover, appointments — and the attendant down time — were rarely convenient for Pippin, who works full time in the accounting office of a Tampa law firm.

The South Tampa resident needed an alternative and asked around.

She found Vet Calls, a mobile veterinary service. Five years — and one euthanasia and two little Yorkies — later, she’s still waxing grateful.

“I think Dr. (Jennifer) Claxton is wonderful,” she says of her Vet Call vet. “The dogs totally trust her. And they obviously have her total attention. There’s no one else in line, no distractions.”

By all indications, Pippen is part of a national trend. According to the American Association of House Calls and Mobile Veterinarians, some 5,000 vets now make house calls nationwide in both rural and urban areas. Several dozen are here in the Bay Area.

As for Dr. Claxton, 41, four days a week she leaves her St. Petersburg home in her 24-foot, customized (mini pharmacy, EKG and lab equipment, computer) RV and drives to South Tampa, to rendezvous with her assistant, Lisa Hearne, 28. They then head out on the day’s appointed rounds – that can be as far afield as Westchase, South Pasco, Brandon and Riverview.

Her clients tend to be busy moms, the elderly, those without transportation and those with old, large or multiple pets. Her patients: 60 per cent dogs, 40 per cent cats. The procedures: 80 per cent routine, 20 per cent problem-solving and minor illnesses. Neutering, spaying, dental cleaning and micro-chipping can all be done in the van. More serious cases are referred to specialists and hospitals. Standard house call fees are $35 for South Tampa and $45 for North Tampa and vicinity. Basic exam fee is $36.

“It’s easier on everybody,” says Claxton, who has three dogs (mixed-breed rescue animals) and four cats of her own. “And it’s more personal. I can’t imagine being a stationary vet. We’re making veterinary care part of a lifestyle – instead of a huge challenge that some people – and pets – dread.”

No call, however, is more daunting – nor ultimately more appreciated – than the one for euthanasia. It’s a significant percentage of most mobile vets’ house calls.

That’s certainly the case for Dr. Mary Schenk of Tampa. She estimates that nearly a third of her calls are to euthanize a pet. And while it’s painless, it never gets easier, she says. But a “last memory at home,” she stresses, is always preferable to the impersonal.

“It’s peaceful, and the owners are grateful,” Schenk, 37, adds. “It’s easier on everyone.”

From the perspective of Lutz-based Dr. Octavio Blanco, 51, house calls – irrespective of their nature — create much more of a “natural state” – and he’s been creating them for 15 years. “The animal is always more relaxed at home,” he explains.

According to Blanco, the house call trend could burgeon further. Most pet owners, he maintains, still don’t realize such a service is available.

“The medical profession has done a real good job of training the masses,” points out Blanco. “The public is so trained to go to a physician, they assume they have to go to a vet as well.”

But now they’re finding out — increasingly — about those with a special calling.