The Year in Sports - 2008

1. Twice as Nice

The Lady Gators of Wewahitchka High School, behind the dominating pitching of Samantha Rich and a record-shattering power year, defended their state Class 2A softball title one year after becoming the county's first athletic team to win a state crown.

Wewahitchka lost just twice, once to large-school power Tallahassee Lincoln and the second to a Tennessee team ranked No. 11 in the country at the time, and spent another season undefeated in its own classification despite the smallest enrollment in Class 2A.

In a season dedicated to assistant coach Daniel Miller, who suffered a debilitating stroke prior to the season, the Lady Gators set a school record for home runs.

And a year after graduating a nucleus of five players who had known nothing but the state final four during their high school careers, the Lady Gators scarcely missed a beat, demonstrating the program reloads rather than rebuilds.

Rich was her impressive self, losing only twice all year while reaching double digits in home runs, going past the 100 RBI mark in her illustrious career - after only three seasons, no less - and slinging her team through the final four, striking out 31 and allowing a single run in two games to secure a second state championship.

She was named the state Class 2A player of the year and was runner-up Ms. Softball Player of the Year. First-year coach Coy Adkins was named overall Coach of the Year.

In school history, only a boys' basketball team that won a pair of titles in the 1950s had brought home the ultimate crown.

The Lady Gators have now matched that team the past two years with Rich and nearly the entire squad returning for another run to a ring.

2. Eight is Enough

Eight athletes comprised the entire Port St. Joe girls' track contingent at the state Class 1A meet, but it was enough to secure the school's first-ever girls track title.

In the last two years, county public schools have won three state titles, all by women's teams.

The fact was, the Lady Tiger Sharks could have taken sophomore sensation Kayla Parker alone and still finished fourth at state.

Parker won the long jump, the 100-meter hurdles and the 100 and 200 sprints to garner 40 points which would have been good enough for fourth place in the team competition.

But Parker received plenty of support and that pushed the Lady Tiger Sharks atop the field.

Samone Smiley won the shot put and scored in the discus, Fanequa Larry was third in the triple jump and Mariah Johnson was second in the 300 hurdles and added points in the 100 hurdles.

The 4x400 relay team finished second.

Coach Kenny Parker had built the team methodically, competing enough to keep them fresh but not too much in order that they peak at the right time.

The Lady Tiger Sharks romped through the district to the region to the state, with Smiley the lone senior. Coach Parker put it best when he said, "Maybe we are going to start a new tradition."

3. Transition

One of the most successful runs by any coach in county history ended when Port St. Joe High football coach John Palmer decided to return to his roots and accept a coaching position at Hernando High.

Palmer left after seven seasons at Port St. Joe during which his teams went 57-27, averaging 10 wins a season over his final four seasons and winning three regional titles and three Rural Public School championships.

And there was the magical season of 2005, when the Tiger Sharks lost their opener by one point to Blountstown and then reeled off 13 straight wins including a wild come-from-behind victory over then-defending champion Fort Meade to win the state Class 1A title.

The search for a replacement ultimately led to Vern Barth, then an assistant under Perry Brown, a Palmer mentor, at Lynn Haven Mosley High School.

Barth, who preached many of the same offensive philosophies as Palmer, watched his team get off to a slow start, finishing the opening four games of the 2008 season 2-2 including a 38-0 gashing at the hands of district foe West Gadsden.

From there, though, the Tiger Sharks reeled off eight consecutive wins, including road wins over No. 1 ranked and undefeated Mayo Lafayette and West Gadsden, to win another Region 1-1A title.

Port St. Joe fell to eventual state champion North Florida Christian in the state semifinals, the Tiger Sharks' third trip to the state final four in three years, and Barth had put his own stamp on the program.

4. Hall of Fame Recognition

After more than two decades and 500 wins it seemed only fitting that Charles "Scootsie" Fortner would earn some state recognition for the softball program he had molded virtually from scrap at Wewahitchka High School.

And this year the Florida High School Athletics Association did just that by inducting Fortner into its Hall of Fame.

Fortner retired due to health issues after the 2006 season, ending his run with a 542-171 record to go with six-straight finishes in the state final four and one, crowning in its moment of arrival, Class 2A state championship.

Fortner produced a string of strong teams built on good pitching - his touch with pitchers is highlighted by the string of outstanding hurlers his program generated - and solid fundamentals at the plate and in the field.

His teams hit, they fielded, they ran and they did not beat themselves.

Fortner, his health problems in remission and feeling rejuvenated, returned as assistant coach in 2007 as the Lady Gators continued his legacy with another state softball championship, and in the fall he was on the sidelines as the defensive coordinator for the Wewahitchka High football team.

Retirement never seemed to agree with anybody so well.

5. All-Around Prowess

To win the state all-around sports title for either boys or girls in one classification is remarkable.

To accomplish wins in both - almost unheard of, particularly in smaller classifications.

But that is exactly what Port St. Joe High School athletic programs did during the 2007-08 school year, with both the boys and girls programs each securing enough points to win the all-around sports title as named by the Florida High School Athletic Association.

This made Port St. Joe the Class 2A Public School all-around sports champion and the clean sweep was the first for the school and the county.

One state championship, several trips to region finals and a few other runs deep into the playoffs, not to mention some individual achievements, were enough to rack up sufficient points for the Tiger Sharks, the Lady Tiger Sharks and the school of Port St. Joe to boast of being the class of their classification athletically.

6. Signings

The hope for many high school athletes is to parlay success into a ticket punched for the next level of competition, and the county had its share of athletes who are headed ever-higher with the receipt of a diploma.

Wewahitchka's Samantha Rich, arguably as dominant a softball player as there is in the region, ended all speculation early, eschewing such schools as Michigan, Central Florida, Florida State, LSU and Virginia Tech, among a slew of others, to sign with Jacksonville (AL) State.

Rich became the first female athlete from Wewahitchka to go directly from high school to a NCAA Division I scholarship.

Within two weeks, Heather Strange became the second female athlete from Port St. Joe to move directly from high school to a NCAA Division I scholarship when she signed to play softball next year at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia.

Those signings were preceded by the decision of Port St. Joe's standout softball pitcher Kayla Minger to attend and play at Gulf Coast Community College, one of the finest two-year programs in the country, next season.

Those were just the most recent and touted.

Matt Gannon, former multi-sport standout at Port St. Joe High, signed to play baseball at Chipola Junior College.

Shane Duty graduated from Port St. Joe High School destined to play football at Culver Stockton College and his former teammate Brent Vickery headed to Toccoa Falls College to continue his baseball career.

And Zac Norris, who spent one agonizing season watching from the sidelines as an assistant football coach at the high school following his graduation, walked on at the University of Central Florida, earning a spot on the roster before breaking a finger in the weight room.

7. Making the Show

He was listed as one of the Atlanta Braves' top seven prospects by Baseball America prior to the 2008 season after a quick ascent through the team's minor league system and by the end of the season Wewahitchka's Brandon Jones was in Atlanta and on the field.

The Braves' fourth outfielder after joining the show in mid-June, the sweet-swinging lefty appeared in 41 games, hitting .267 with 10 doubles, one triple, one home run and 17 RBIs, demonstrating the blend of speed and power he had showed from Wewahitchka High School to Tallahassee Community College to the minor leagues.

Jones slammed his first career major league home run in just his third game, against the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.

He is the only athlete to come out of Wewahitchka and play in the major leagues, at least according to the Elias Sports Bureau.

8. Individual Excellence

While there was plenty of team success on the athletic fields, hardwoods and tracks this past year, this was also a year to toast individual achievement.

•·           Billy Naylor of Wewahitchka High finished second in the 1,600 at the state Class 1A meet in the spring, his second trip to the state meet, and also qualified for the state cross country meet for the third straight year in the fall, running a personal best to finish in the top 20.

•·           Parker Harris of Port St. Joe finished fourth in the pole vault at the state Class 1A track meet and was joined there by Travis Dailey, who won the shot put at the Region 1 meet but finished just out of the points at the state meet.

•·           Wewahitchka's Daniel House qualified for the state meet after compiling a 23-8 record in the revived program's second year and is off to a fast start this winter and seems headed toward another trip to state.

•·           Port St. Joe's Grant Rish qualified for the state golf tournament this past fall after winning district and region tournaments.

•·           Megan Walker, a Port St. Joe middle-schooler, continued her excellence with the pole vault, setting a national age-group record and winning gold at the AAU National Junior Olympic Track and Field meet this summer. 

•·           Natayla Miller and Kayla Williams of Wewahitchka qualified for the state Class 1A meet in the 1,600 meters and high jump, respectively.

9. One Step Further

The all-around sports titles won by the boys and girls of Port St. Joe High School were as much due to the all-around depth of the school's athletic programs as state championships, of which the school's girls track team provided the lone title.

But Port St. Joe teams shone throughout the calendar year.

The Tiger Sharks came alive, as they have so often during the tenure of fifth-year Coach Derek Kurnitsky, down the stretch and reached the Region1-2A final before bowing out of the boys' basketball tournament a year after another trip to the final four.

In softball, the Lady Tiger Sharks might have been the second-best Class 2A team in the state. Wewahitchka coach Coy Adkins, the state's coach of the year, said it several times.

Unfortunately, the Lady Gators represented a huge boulder in the path to the state semifinals as the Tiger Sharks lost to Wewahitchka twice during the regular season, in the district tournament final and in the Region 1-2A semifinals.

Kayla Minger won 20 games for the second-straight year, making her arguably the second-most dominant player in the region behind Samantha Rich, but small consolation as again the Lady Tiger Sharks could not quite get past Wewahitchka.

Port St. Joe's baseball team reached the Region 1-2A semifinals before losing to defending champion and eventual runner-up North Florida Christian.

That Tallahassee school also ended the Tiger Sharks football run in the fall, as the Eagles won a state Class 2A semifinal matchup en route to the state title.