Santa Rosa County swim teams got some preseason work in on Tuesday in a preseason relay meet at the Pullum YMCA in Navarre. Navarre, Pace and Milton all competed at the meet on a hot and humid afternoon. Gulf Breeze was there as well.

Panhandle Prospects is hosting its third Top 40 Showcase Aug. 27 at the Fricker Center in Pensacola. The top 40 players from the area will be participating in front of college coaches and members of the media, including Milton’s Treymar Jones and Ra’shaun Elzy as well as Jay’s Mason Allen. CJ McKinley, who had been playing at Milton and will play this season at FCP National High School, will also participate.

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.

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).

All eyes from the inline speedskating community are on Milton with the completion of the track at Weber’s Skate World. The governing body of inline speedskating came out with new designs for parabolic tracks that fits in with the new technology as well as the speeds now reached in skating.

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.