ee r F
The LAKER EAST PASCO EDITION
LAKERLUTZNEWS.COM
N OV E M B E R 1 2 , 2 0 1 4
Playoff foe now awaiting Bulldogs By Michael Murillo
[email protected]
Orthopedic care that’s close. So you can go far. To help you get back to your active life, we provide services ranging from general orthopedic care and sports medicine to minimally invasive hip, knee and shoulder replacements. To find an orthopedic surgeon, call 877-DOC-5321 (362-5321) or visit BayfrontDadeCity.com.
13100 Fort King Road Bayfront Health Dade City is directly or indirectly owned by a partnership that proudly includes physician owners, including certain members of the hospital’s medical staff.
Each year, high school football teams enter the season with specific goals. Some achieve them, and others fall short. For Zephyrhills High School, the goal for the past several years has been to make the playoffs.And each year, they’ve fallen short. Until now. The Bulldogs snapped an eight-year playoff drought by winning a three-way tiebreaker that had teams playing one quarter of football against each other to determine a winner. As a result, Zephyrhills is headed to the postseason as the Class 5A-District 7 runnerup, finally achieving a major goal for 2014. There’s just one problem:The actual playoffs haven’t even started yet. So now what? “You feel really good for a short time, but you know you’ve got to get back to work and start over,” Zephyrhills coach Reggie Roberts said.“Our objective is not just to get there. It’s to perform once we get to the playoffs.” Soon after he was drenched in a celebratory bath from the water cooler, Roberts already was thinking of the Bulldogs’ playoff strategy.
FRED BELLET/PHOTO
Zephyrhills High School Senior Jaylen Pickett and the rest of the Bulldogs hope to extend their playoff run past Nov. 14.
And Zephyrhills isn’t expecting a warm welcome in their return to the postseason. Their first match-up will be Nov. 14 at Live Oak to face Suwannee High School, a team that didn’t need any tiebreakers to qualify for the playoffs. With a perfect 9-0 overall record headed into their final regular season game, Suwannee dominated District 5 with
a 6-0 mark. The team — also nicknamed the Bulldogs — has held opponents to seven points or less four separate times, while being held under 30 themselves just once. The key to the Zephyrhills’ success, acSee BULLDOGS, page 6
LEND YOUR
EARZ
TM
Participants sought for Hearing Aids in noise study. ACT NOW! Deadline is Dec. 12th Free loaner hearing aids, exams and follow up care in exchange for your opinion of a new invention.
813-782-5395 Zephyrhills www.GardnerAudiology.com
FRED BELLET/PHOTO
A great day for a perfect landing FRED BELLET/PHOTO
A bright future Nancy Cerezo fields questions from Woodland Elementary School second-graders about college life at Saint Leo University.
More photos, page 5.
More than 100 elite aerial athletes swooped into Skydive City in Zephyrhills to compete at the Federation Aeronautique Internationale World Canopy Piloting Championships, which took place Nov. 4-7. The weather was perfect as competitors dazzled crowds by swooping through a slalom-like course for hundreds of yards, across the ground and over water at speeds approaching 90 mph. Argentinian parachutist Diego Andres Zazzarini lands hard in a pile of gravel during the final round in the distance category.
Developers revive Epperson Ranch with Crystal Lagoon By Michael Hinman
[email protected]
COURTESY OF MIKE OSSOLA
Thirsting for knowledge Community members, local government officials and employees at Zephyrhills water enjoy a day of family fun and water education at the Zephyrhills community open house on Oct. 25. The day included a tour of the bottling facility, and a visit to the kid-friendly, educational WaterVentures Learning Lab.
The interchange connecting Overpass Road to Interstate 75 couldn’t come soon enough. With the housing market seemingly healed — at least as far as Pasco County is concerned — developers want to bring thousands of homes to an area known as Epperson Ranch, complete with a retail center, and America’s introduction to something known as Crystal Lagoon. “It would be the first of its kind in North America,” said Pat Gassaway, president of Heidt Design, one of the representatives behind the developer of the proposed Epperson Ranch Town Center. He shared details of the recreation area with members of the Pasco County Development Review Committee last month, and is scheduled for the Pasco County Commission Nov. 5. “They have chosen to implement it here in Pasco County, and let me pause to let that sink in,” Gassaway said.“It actually looks better in person than in the photographs, and that rarely happens.” Crystal Lagoons Corp. is a Chile-based
The company’s first Crystal Lagoon in San Alfonso del Mar covers 20 acres, and is more than a half-mile long.The cost to build one is said by the company on its website to be “10 times less” than that of a similarsized golf course, and consumes half the water a typical conventional park would use. The town center was part of a much larger deCOURTESY OF CRYSTAL LAGOON CORP. velopment of regional The new Epperson Town Center Project near Overpass and Curley impact in the area where roads, is expected to have the first Crystal Lagoon in North Overpass and Curley America, a massive water project that creates aquatic activities in roads meet. Once the areas where water at this quality might not be available. housing market crashed, however, the project land development company that can turn went dormant. Now new developers have dry land into what they call the world’s stepped in, looking to break some of the elelargest swimming pools. They can cover ments apart, but still stay close to some of acres of land, typically at a depth of at least the original development plans of bringing 8 feet, and allow for both swimming and thousands of people into that part of Pasco water sports, which might not already be See EPPERSON, page 6 available.
