Gulf holds off looking for new head coach

By Compiled by STEVE LEE, KEVIN KELLY and GREG AUMAN

© St. Petersburg Times, published February 16, 2000

Gulf athletic director Paul Girardi said Tuesday the school has not started a search for a new coach.

Tom Jessee resigned from his teaching post at the school to take a job as intramural director at the University of Tampa last month and coached his final game at Gulf Thursday.

Gulf lost 37-21 to East Lake in the Class 5A, District 10 semifinals and finished 7-16.

"It's only the last game for our seniors," Jessee said. "You feel sad for them. They worked so hard as all seniors do. As far as my last game, I'll coach again somewhere.

"My coaching career is not over. It's just over at Gulf."

When Jessee took over at Gulf, the program had won just eight of 101 games in its previous four seasons. Included were 1-25 and 1-26 seasons.

In his first season, Jessee led the Buccaneers to their first regional playoff game in school history and their first district final since 1985.

Gulf finished 13-14 that season and 16-12 last season.

"The people there have been very supportive of me," Jessee said.

"I have nothing but good things to say about the administration, and the kids and the fans from Gulf have been great."

PGA player to appear at Hernando course

Raymond Floyd, a veteran of the PGA and Senior PGA Tours, will appear at Oak Hills Golf Course -- which he owns -- in Spring Hill from 10 to 11 a.m. today. Floyd, 57, the only player to win on both the PGA and Senior tours in the same year (1992), is in the Tampa Bay area to play in the GTE Classic this week.

Tom Varn update

Monday's rains have thrown the schedule for the Tom Varn Invitational off a bit. Wesley Chapel is the only Pasco County team definitely playing today. It visits Springstead at 7 p.m. Zephyrhills plays Lecanto at 7 p.m. Thursday at Springstead.

The schedules for Pasco, Land O'Lakes, River Ridge, Ridgewood, Hudson and Gulf depend on what they did in Tuesday's games. If they lost, they play today. If they won, they play Thursday.

The hackers who got E-Bay strike again?

There aren't many Web sites of interest to local sports fans (with the obvious exceptions of sptimes.com and the invaluable fhsaa.org). But it seems many of the ones that are out there are on autopilot lately.

Let's start with floridawrestling.com, which opened wrestling season looking like a great resource for fresh info. But for about six weeks now, it hasn't updated its rankings and has had the same "look for more information later this week" line on their front page.

We tried e-mailing them and got no response, so we're fearing abandonment.

And with track season two weeks away, we're hoping the folks at flrunners.com can offer the same great insight and statewide perspective they offered during cross country season.

Another solid site, coachnet.net, which touts itself as "everything track and field and cross country in Florida," claims to be working on a preseason honor roll.

But we have to question the big type boasting 1.73-million hits since Jan. 9.

There absolutely cannot be that many people bombarding that site.

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