See Districts 1 & 2, See Districts 3 & 4, See Districts 5 & 6, see Districts 7 & 8, See Districts 9 & 10, See Districts 11 & 12, See Districts 13 & 14.  See District 15.  See District 19.  See District 20. See District 23.  See District 24.   District 25   District 25 last season was dominated by Cardinal Mooney as they swept their conference games and the playoffs and advanced to the second round of the FHSAA bracket where they ran into Barron Collier, falling 15-5 in the round of 16.  Not exactly a bad result for the program.  The district needs to continue to improve to give them a run because none of their conference games were close.  ODA Sarasota also advanced to the finals so they will be the first to look at as challengers.   Cardinal Mooney took advantage of being placed in their new district and swept their conference schedule, going 12-7 overall.  They were not able to come up with a significant out of conference win but playing Barron Collier, Gulf Coast, Oxbridge Tampa Jesuit and H.B. Plant was excellent preparation for their conference slate.  Oxbridge drops off the schedule but IMG replaces them. Coach Clayton Wight looks to a number of contributors this season Junior attackman Reagan Griffith, one of the state’s leading scorers and senior middie Tommy Vassallo, one of the state’s leaders in assists and ground balls return to power the offense, while senior captain Alex Stoffel (Skidmore) and senior Nick Bobbitt (Catawba) are stalwarts on defense.  Coach Wight also feels that his junior twin middies Zach and Christian Berendes will be difference-makers for the team.  

 

  One other important facet of this season was how the Berendes twins are difference-makers off the field as they started the charitable cause “Friends of Mooney”.  Coach Wight wrote “The purpose of the program is to adopt a child with a life threatening illness and allow them the opportunity to experience the excitement of sports while the team plays in honor of that child and gives their support and prayers to the child as he/she fights against their illness.  This season the team is inviting Olivia Minutolo of St. Petersburg, Florida.  She is 5 years old and attends St. Paul’s Catholic School.   On 9/9/14, Olivia was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia.   Her treatment is a 2 1/2 year process so hopefully (if we can make this experience special) she will hang with us through her treatment.” Maybe other schools can talk to Coach Wight and the Berendes twins to see if they too can look at a similar venture?   ODA-Sarasota finished second in the conference with a 5-3 mark and performed pretty much in line all season, beating the schools they were ranked above but not really able to beat those rated above them.  They finished 9-6 overall as opposed to 6-5 in 2013 so the program is trending in the right direction.  Coach Philip Meyer is happy with the trend and noted that success this year will be more of a team effort instead of individual stars.     He also noted that former Sarasota military head coach Danny Robbins, a former player at Maryland, has joined the staff and that he will make a difference to the program.   Sarasota Military Academy finished third in the district and compiled a 3-9 overall record last season.  Jamie Carver takes over the reins of the program and will look at an up to down rebuild.  The team struggled on both sides of the ball.  

  St. Stephen’s Episcopal went 1-12 but there was some cause for optimism as the offense was able to put up good goal totals.  Unfortunately the team gave up 12 or more goals in 12 of the 13 games they played.  New head coach Jamie Carver will look to focus on cutting down the goals against and if the offense keeps coming through the team could improve quickly. http://preps.heraldtribune.com/2014/10/06/saint-stephens-carver-coach-boys-lacrosse/   District 26   Bishop Verot ran away with the district last year and has now won 23 straight conference games over the past two seasons.  The district playoffs were much closer than the regular season games and that points to a more competitive landscape going forward.  BV then lost in the first round of FHSAA play, going down to former district mate Cardinal Mooney 15-7.  The southwest corner of Florida is rapidly expanding its’ youth footprint and we’ll see how the teams here start to benefit from that.     Bishop Verot went 12-5 overall for the season, but like so many other schools on the way up, wasn’t quite able to come up with a signature win, falling to Cardinal Mooney three times, strong district 19 member South Fork and state #7 Gulf Coast.  It doesn’t get any easier this season as state #4 Barron Collier replaces South Fork on Coach Gary Neese’s schedule.   Canterbury-Ft. Myers head coach Dave Manzi guided the Cougars to an 11-7 overall record and a berth in the district final, falling to BV 15-12 in that game.  The offense failed to reach double digits only four times all season and is a strength but the defense did give up a lot of goals too so that is where the most potential improvement can come from. The team is led by junior middie Scott Wheeler and seniors Chapin Leatherwood at midfield and Danny Rafalski on attack.   Fort Myers went 7-6 for the season, 6-4 in conference.  The only games out of conference were against powers Barron Collier and Gulf Coast, as well as a solid Naples squad.  Neither BC or GC are on the schedule this year and a fuller slate of 16 games makes the schedule more in line with where they are.  New Coach Chip Dopman will be looking to build this program.     Estero rode a solid defense to a 7-8 record as they gave up single digit goal totals in only four games and took #1 seed down to the wire in the first round of districts, falling 13-12 to BV.  A look at the scores from the season showed a team that struggled with consistency, with the defensive side of the ball showing the most.  The offense wasn’t able to carry the defense and when the team gave up 7 goals they lost each game, so this is an interesting team that might not be too far from competing for the district crown.     Coach Richard Williamson is feeling pretty good about the direction the program is going as he has been able to put in their first JV team and the number of potential players in the pipeline has taken a major step forward.  The team’s strength starts from the back out.  Junior goalie Sean Filiault put up a .739 save percentage last year, which ranked him nationally.  Sophomore defender Josh St. John and senior long pole Elijah Sopher return to lead the defense.  And Sopher sometimes grabs the short stick too.  Junior Sean Dunphy handles faceoffs and put up solid numbers and chips in with assists too.  Lucas Richmond, a senior middie/attack put up 33 goals last year, many with what Coach Williamson has described as a rocket left hand. This is a program to keep an eye on.   Cypress Lake finished with a 2-13 record under Coach Bruce Dekoff and Riverdale finished the season 1-7, 0-6 in conference.