It’s hot here on a practice field just outside of Pen Air Field on an early August afternoon. The kind of hot that requires multiple water breaks over the course of two hours and popsicles at the end of practice.
And yet, the University of West Florida football team pushes through the brutal summer heat and stifling humidity.
Joe Surratt helps a young football player adjust his helmet before practice begins for Central on an open athletic field in rural Santa Rosa County.
It’s one of those things that comes with the territory of being a program literally being built from the ground up.
Manny Kimmons started playing football in middle school and hasn’t looked back. He’s now one of the Milton Panthers’ top players going into the 2023 season.
A senior defensive lineman, Kimmons is doing his best to be a leader.
The University of West Florida men’s basketball team has added two coaches to its staff for the 2023-24 season.
Former Navarre hoops assistant and Raider alum Tyler Welch is joining the staff along with Justin Mann, a former head coach at Independence Community College in Kansas.
Autumn Boutwell received some good basketball advice in middle school that has served her well into her high school career.
It’s clear she’s taken that advice to heart as she’s cemented herself as one of the top 3-point shooters in the area and is currently the school record holder at Central for 3-pointers made in a season (71) and career (123).
David Aboya started playing basketball in the eighth grade. He loved the sport from the jump. When he got to high school, his friends convinced him to give football a shot as well. Never mind that he had never played the game.
Alyssa Clark wasn’t about to let a Crestview player get an easy two points off an uncontested layup in a game earlier this summer.
A track athlete as well as a basketball player, the junior for Pace kicked her speed into another gear and took off after her before blocking the shot.
Mark Yepshin has two young children. One just turned 3. The other is a little over a year. So when his name was mentioned as a possible head coach for the first women’s soccer program in Pensacola State history, he had to make sure his wife was on board.
