North Suncoast: News and notes

By IZZY GOULD and DAVID MURPHY, Times Staff Writers
Published January 26, 2008

District re-dux

After a 5-1 victory over Sarasota Riverview in the region quarterfinals, Mitchell coach Karl Kukec was asking the same question as many of his peers in regards to his opponent in Tuesday's region semifinal: Why?

Thanks to a change in scheduling guidelines adopted by the Florida High School Athletic Association last summer, the Mustangs will host Countryside in a rematch of the Class 6A, District 7 title game held a week ago. In fact, six of the eight Class 6A region semi-finals will feature teams who played each other less than two weeks before the district tournament.

"I don't know why they do that like that," Kukec said.

In previous years, teams from the same district wouldn't meet until the region finals. But FHSAA spokesman Jack Watford said the change was enacted to curtail the hassles of cross-state travel that often occurred under the old format.

For example, last year, Countryside hosted Melbourne in the region semi-finals, forcing Melbourne to take a three-hour bus ride.

Watford said he's heard plenty of complaints from coaches, and that the rules are subject to review every year.

Girls soccer region semifinals

All games at 7 p.m. Tuesday

Class 6A

Countryside at Mitchell

Class 5A

Newsome at Bloomingdale

East Lake at Palm Harbor University

Lakewood Ranch at Seminole

Class 3A

Berkeley Prep at Clearwater Central Catholic

Class 2A

Shorecrest at Tampa Prep

On the Web

Have a question for one of our prep writers? Want to sound off in response to one of our county-by-county writers' blogs? Nominate Top Performers for the month? For this and more, check out our high school sports blog at http://blogs.tampabay.com/preps/.

To Report Scores

Coaches are asked to call 1-800-333-7505, ext. 8123 no later than 11 p.m. each night.

More options for Humphrey

Tate Humphrey's future got a little clearer when he received a high enough score on his ACT to qualify for play at every NCAA division below D-I. Previously, Humphrey had only qualified to play junior college football, Coach Scott Schmitz said.

So what is the dual-threat Mitchell quarterback going to do? Schmitz said Humphrey still wants to play Division I, which would mean he'd likely have to go to a junior college. But Schmitz said they are going to look at all options.

"I'm basically going to leave it up to him," the coach said. "To me, the most important thing is that he goes on to school and gets an education and graduates."

Contact us

Izzy Gould can be reached at izzygould@gmail.com or 813 909-4619. David Murphy can be reached at dmurphy@sptimes.com or (352) 848-1407.

[Last modified January 25, 2008, 21:31:47]