Pace football players emerge from the locker room and head towards the two charter buses sitting in the parking lot behind the stadium just after 6:30 a.m. on a cloudy Friday morning.
They are carrying pillows, their bags, and their hopes of a playoff victory over Buchholz later that night just outside of Gainesville.
Kara Lay is in her second season as the head coach of the L.E.A.D. Academy and she loves her team, which might lack experience but more than makes up for it with competitive fire.
“If I told them the Orlando Magic were coming to play us, the girls would say are we going man or zone on defense,” Lay said.
Four Santa Rosa County girls basketball teams converged on the same court last week for a Tip-off tournament at Pace, giving coaches a chance to put their teams in live-action situations against an actual opponent.
Jay rolled rolled past Pensacola Christian 51-21 in its game last Thursday while Pace crushed Pensacola Catholic 61-23. Milton and Central squared off at the end of the night and the Panthers edged the Jaguars 51-46.
Expectations are high for the L.E.A.D. Academy boys basketball team. But even those have limits.
Especially after how well the Lions did a season ago, fashioning a 27-2 record.
Pace’s boys golf team completed its season Tuesday at Mission Inn Resort & Club in Howey-in-the-Hills in Lake County, Fla.
The Patriots finished 14th as a team at the state tournament, carding a 328 in the one-day 18-hole event.
Milton started off its freshman football season on a high note. Perhaps too high of one.
The Panthers, in their one quarter of preseason action back in August, scored really quick on offense and then scored again on a pick six.
Monday mornings this season always seemed to be enveloped in uncertainty for the Milton Panthers.
“Every Monday it seemed to be something else,” first-year Panther head coach Kelly Gillis said. “Another injury. Another two injuries. The flu hit. A lot of the kids could have said we’re done with this. No one did that. I’ve been around a lot of teams that would have cashed it in. Our guys kept coming to work.”
Milton’s girls weightlifting team is coming off a banner season. The Panthers won district and regional championships for the first time and placed third in the state in traditional.
With success comes higher expectations. And senior Lily Priddy epitomizes the will of this team to embrace those expectations.
Chandler Castleman is a little more settled into his role now as the head coach of the Pace girls soccer team.
Now in his second year, Castleman points to getting used to the extra work that comes with the behind-the-scenes stuff, but credits assistant Kirti Colvin for helping with all the extras that are part of coaching high school athletics.
A crazy and uncertain early part of the week finally gained a little clarity late Tuesday morning.
Pace’s football team learned it’s opening round Region 1-4S playoff game will be played Friday night at 6:30 p.m. Central time at Newberry High School rather than Thursday night as originally scheduled.
