Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Prep football: Palmetto's tentative football schedule

The Palmetto Tigers are looking for their fourth straight postseason berth in the fall.
Here is their tentative schedule. Game time is 7:30.

8/23 RIVERVIEW (Kickoff Classic)
8/30 VENICE
9/6 at St. Petersburg Lakewood
9/13 at Clearwater Countryside
9/20 at North Port*
9/27 BAYSHORE
10/11 MANATEE
10/18 at Lakewood Ranch*
10/25 SARASOTA*
11/1 BRADEN RIVER*
11/8 at Southeast

*- Class 7A-District 10 game

Friday, February 22, 2013

Prep football: Southeast's 2013 schedule

Listed below is the Southeast's 2013 varsity football schedule.
Game time is 7:30 p.m. unless otherwise noted.

8/23 at Venice (Kickoff Classic)
8/30 at Lakewood Ranch
9/6 CLEARWATER COUNTRYSIDE
9/13 BRADEN RIVER
9/20 at Bayshore*
9/27 at Manatee
10/11 at Riverview
10/18 at Arcadia DeSoto, 7 p.m.*
10/25 WAUCHULA HARDEE*
11/1 BOOKER*
11/8 PALMETTO

* - Class 5A-District 13 game

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Prep football: Manatee to open 2013 season in Maryland

The Manatee Hurricanes will continue their jet-setting ways in the fall, opening the 2013 season against Gilman, Md., at 2 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 1.
The game will benefit the Brothers In Arms and is set to be played at the University of Maryland. The game will also be broadcast live on ESPN.
Coach Joe Kinnan said the team will fly into Ronald Regan Washington National Airport on Saturday and will tour Washington, D.C. He said a tour of the Pentagon may happen, as well.
"It's going to be a good experience," said Kinnan, who anticipates 51 players making the trip.
Manatee opened the 2010 season in Pittsburgh, Pa., and the '11 campaign in Olney, Md. But a trip to Seattle last season to play Skyline High was scrapped when funding fell through.
"This is going to happen," Kinnan said about the Gilman game.
An all boys school located in Roland Park, Gilman went 9-2 last season and was ranked second in the state by MaxPreps. The Greyhounds also won Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association's Class A title.
The Canes will play another Maryland team when Friendship Collegiate Academy comes to Bradenton on Sept. 13. The teams were supposed to meet last year but couldn't nail down a date, and Manatee wound up hosting Miami Central, the eventual Class 6A state champion.
"We wanted to make right by them," Kinnan said, "by doing this after what happened last year."
The Canes play Tallahassee Lincoln in their spring game.
Listed below is the rest of Manatee's 2013 schedule.
Games are at 7:30 unless otherwise noted.

8/23  East Lake (Kickoff Classic)
9/1 at Gilman, Md, 2 p.m.
9/6 VENICE
9/13 FRIENDSHIP COLLEGIATE ACADEMY
9/20 Sarasota
9/27 SOUTHEAST
10/4 RIVERVIEW*
10/11 at Palmetto
10/18 at St. Petersburg*
10/25  UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF NSU
 11/1 PALM HARBOR UNIVERSITY*


*-Class 8A-District 7 game

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Prep footall: Former Seminole Adrian McPherson signs with Tampa Bay Storm

Adrian McPherson is coming home.
Sort of.
The former Southeast Seminoles superstar has signed with the Tampa Bay Storm of the Arena Football League, according to the league's website.
This marks McPherson's fourth season in the AFL and first with the Storm. He earned the league's Rookie of the Year Award in 2004, when he threw for 3,297 yards and 61 touchdowns with the Indiana Firebirds.
He spent the last five seasons with the Montreal Alouettes  of the Canadian Football League, where he appeared in 77 games, threw for 20 touchdowns and ran for 10 more. He also won a pair of Grey Cups.
McPherson, of course, is better known for his years at Southeast, when he was named Mr. Basketball and Mr. Football, and threw for 7,220 yards and 86 touchdowns in three seasons before running into trouble at Florida State.

Monday, February 4, 2013

Why Prep Rally is on hiatus

Meet Derek John Lembo.
He's 7 pounds, 20.5 inches. He was born 8:27 Saturday morning.
And he's my son.
My wife and I are overjoyed about our perfect little addition and ready to start the next and most important chapter of our lives.
I will be off the next two weeks, returning to work Monday, Feb. 18. So Prep Rally will be dark for a while.
But as the attached picture proves, it will be dark for a very good reason.
See you in a couple of weeks.

-John

Friday, February 1, 2013

Prep baseball: Brackets set for 2013 Sarasota Baseball Classic

photo by Grant Jefferies
A year after finishing second in the Elite Division, Manatee is one of five area teams returning to the Sarasota Baseball Classic.
This year's tournament is scheduled to run from March 25 through March 28 at various sites in Sarasota County.
Similar to last season, the Classic will be separated into two fields: Blue and Red.
The Blue Bracket is a traditional bracket that features Braden River, Manatee and Cardinal Mooney.
The Pirates meet Hernando in the first round, while the Hurricanes meet Pine Crest and the Cougars face Miami Palmetto.
All three games will be played at the Buck O'Neil Baseball Complex in Twin Lakes Park, and the Blue Bracket final will be played Thursday.
The Red Bracket is is broken into two four-team pools. Palmetto is in Pool A and Lakewood Ranch is in Pool B.
The Tigers play Charlotte, Boca Raton and Coral Glades in pool play, and the Mustangs face North Port, Dade Christian and Eagle's View Academy.
How each team fares in each pool will determine the schedule on the final day.

Prep baseball: Catching up with Holmes Beach native Chris Perez

photo by The Associated Press
Before he was a St. Louis Cardinal and Cleveland Indian, Chris Perez was a Miami Hurricane.
So the Holmes Beach native and a member of Team USA for the upcoming World Baseball Classic was surprised to hear the school's strength and conditioning coach for the baseball teams was linked to baseball's newest PED scandal.
Jimmy Goins, the Hurricanes' strength coach who served in the same capacity when Perez was at Miami from 2004-06, was attached to a Miami anti-aging clinic in a story by the Miami New Times.
According to the New Times story, the clinic, Biogenisis, supplied performance-enhancing drugs to a number of current major leaguers, including New York Yankees star Alex Rodriguez, Washington Nationals pitcher Gio Gonzalez and Toronto Blue Jays outfielder Melky Cabrera.
Cabrera was named the MVP of last year's All-Star Game while with the San Francisco Giants before he was suspended in August for failing a drug test.
"I really couldn't see (Goins) doing it," Perez said during my interview with him Thursday afternoon. "It's an unfortunate situation, and hopefully, we'll learn more as more stuff comes out. But it doesn't look good."
Goins' attorney, Gordon Fenderson, told the Huffington Post his client is innocent and still employed by the university.
"He hasn't done anything wrong either personally or as a representative of the University of Miami," Fenderson told the site. "And as far as being on a client list of a certain doctor, any connection of the University of Miami or their baseball program would be purely coincidental."
Kyle Bellamy, a former Hurricane now in the White Sox system, agreed when he spoke to The Miami Herald.
“He has complete paperwork and documents to back it up and prove he was not there illegally or to buy stuff to sell or anything in that matter,” Bellamy told the paper. “There’s no doubt in his mind his name will be cleared.”
In the wake of this latest drug blemish, many players and media members are calling for harsher penalties if players are caught using performance-enhancing drugs.
While Perez wants a clean game, he considers some of the ideas a bit extreme.
"I lie somewhere in between. Maybe they need to be more stricter, but I've heard some really off-the-wall ideas," he said, "like being suspended for a full season for one positive test and being suspended for life for a second. People have to remember that a lot of these players are coming out of high school and they're still young kids...They're still learning to be adults, learning to be major leaguers. They're going to make some mistakes.
"I want a clean game. I'm 100 percent clean, and I remember blowing a couple of saves against Melky Cabrera when he was with the Royals."
As for the game itself, Perez is pleased with the Indians' offseason, which has included the acquisitions of outfielder Nick Swisher and corner infielder Mark Reynolds, and the hiring of manager Terry Franconca, who won two World Series while piloting the Boston Red Sox from 2004-11.
"It's been the most active winter since I've been an Indian," Perez said. "It's great."
The Indians headed into the All-Star break last year at 44-41 and three games back of the White Sox in the American League Central. The second half, however, was a disaster: Cleveland went 24-53 the rest of the way, posting their fewest wins (68) since 2003.
Perez had another solid season, finishing fourth in the league with 39 saves and earning his second-straight trip to the All-Star Game.
"Something needed to change after last year," he said. "Everybody is real excited to see what we got and put last year behind us. And I'm really excited to play for a guy like Terry Francona - I've only seen him from a distance, but I've heard nothing but good things.
"Just really good baseball moves."



Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/02/01/3211355/ex-miami-hurricanes-player-says.html#storylink=cpy