FHSAA Season Preview – District 21
Written by Lee Roggenburg on . Posted in Uncategorized.
District 21
District 21 moves us back to the East Coast as Cocoa Beach and Edgewood jump to varsity status and join 4 of the 5 2015 District 17 schools (Holy Trinity moves to District 22) for this season. A highly competitive regular season ended with Viera in the top spot for the district playoff, only to be stunned by Rockledge, a team they had outscored 33-7 in two regular season contests, 13-8 in the first round. Merritt Island, at 11-7 on the regular season, edged Rockledge to grab the FHSAA spot, where they lost in the 1st round to Melbourne Central Catholic. A repeat of the district upheaval would make quite the story. It was arguably the biggest upset of the Florida high school season.
Viera will look to defend its’ regular season title under new head coach Charlie Crawford and the district looks just as competitive as last year. He will look at his defense, which gave up at least 13 goals in each of their 5 losses in their 13-5 season. Goal scoring was not much of an issue.
Coach Crawford will look to Rob Rider (Sr.), Julian Rodriguez (Jr.) and Layne Miller (Sr.) will comprise the experienced attack. Ryan Morgan (sr.) Goalie and Jaxon Lenk (jr.) Defenseman will return to shore up the defense. Wekiva transfer Nate Santa and Griffin Syverson are starting offensive middies with Kyle Troiano and Asa Anderson being defensive middie specialist. Ryan Morgan, Layne Miller and Rob Rider will be playing college lacrosse with several schools still vying for their commitment.
Coach Crawford also noted “Merritt Island will be the team to beat in our District and Rockledge is our good natured rival because most of the boys know each other well. We graduated 14 last year and lost 1 player to MCC, so this is a rebuilding year with mostly newcomers. However, as always our goal is to win our district again and compete in the playoffs.”
Merritt Island finished at 11-7 on the regular season and 4-2 in conference. Coach Albert Dolente enters his third season at the helm and his team’s regular season had a similar feel to it as they struggled with goals against in their losses while scoring plenty in their wins.
Rockledge went from 5-6 in 2013 as an Independent to 12-5 in their second year as a varsity squad, and also faces the issue of cutting down goals against when playing the better programs. The district final run should whet their appetite for further improvement.
Coach Doug Kuhblank will look for that growth curve to stretch out for a long time to come.
Satellite is a little more difficult to handicap this season. Last season they went 7-0 out of district and 0-4 inside it. Two bad losses to Rockledge and Holy Trinity matched by an OT loss to Merritt Island and a 4-goal loss to Viera . . . no pattern emerging. So, will the real Satellite please stand up?
Second year head coach Doug Faircloth has scheduled 17 games this season so the answer will play itself out.
Cocoa Beach has only won one game in their brief club tenure so head coach Kevin Ebright has his work cut out for him but you have to give him props for taking this step. Last year’s team only scored more than 4 goals once and the defense gave up double digits in each game so the only direction to go is up.
Edgewood finished last year at 3-10 but at least knows it can compete with Cocoa, as they won both encounters last season handily and also chalked up a win over varsity squad Eau Gallie. But the same issue in their losses of goals against jumps out as they yielded 96 goals to the other five District members not named Cocoa.
Coach David Blumenthal has assumed the top spot and he wrote in with his thoughts:
“Offensively our key players will be Taylor Watkins, Junior Midfielder, Adam Lawrence, Sophomore Midfielder, Andrew Preston, Sophomore Midfielder, Dylan Fey, Junior Midfielder, as well as Kyle Eastman, Junior Attack, Joseph Vanderlaan, Sophomore Attack, and Ryan Sass, Junior Attack.
Defensively, key players are JR Houston, Senior and Connor McGowan, Junior.
Merritt Island, Viera and Rockledge have been around as a program longer than we have, so I would say these are the teams that we will use to measure our progress as a growing program.
Our goal will be to qualify for District playoffs, with an overall record at or above .500.”
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Viera will look to defend its’ regular season title under new head coach Charlie Crawford and the district looks just as competitive as last year. He will look at his defense, which gave up at least 13 goals in each of their 5 losses in their 13-5 season. Goal scoring was not much of an issue.
Coach Crawford will look to Rob Rider (Sr.), Julian Rodriguez (Jr.) and Layne Miller (Sr.) will comprise the experienced attack. Ryan Morgan (sr.) Goalie and Jaxon Lenk (jr.) Defenseman will return to shore up the defense. Wekiva transfer Nate Santa and Griffin Syverson are starting offensive middies with Kyle Troiano and Asa Anderson being defensive middie specialist. Ryan Morgan, Layne Miller and Rob Rider will be playing college lacrosse with several schools still vying for their commitment.
Coach Crawford also noted “Merritt Island will be the team to beat in our District and Rockledge is our good natured rival because most of the boys know each other well. We graduated 14 last year and lost 1 player to MCC, so this is a rebuilding year with mostly newcomers. However, as always our goal is to win our district again and compete in the playoffs.”
Merritt Island finished at 11-7 on the regular season and 4-2 in conference. Coach Albert Dolente enters his third season at the helm and his team’s regular season had a similar feel to it as they struggled with goals against in their losses while scoring plenty in their wins.
Rockledge went from 5-6 in 2013 as an Independent to 12-5 in their second year as a varsity squad, and also faces the issue of cutting down goals against when playing the better programs. The district final run should whet their appetite for further improvement.
Coach Doug Kuhblank will look for that growth curve to stretch out for a long time to come.
Satellite is a little more difficult to handicap this season. Last season they went 7-0 out of district and 0-4 inside it. Two bad losses to Rockledge and Holy Trinity matched by an OT loss to Merritt Island and a 4-goal loss to Viera . . . no pattern emerging. So, will the real Satellite please stand up?
Second year head coach Doug Faircloth has scheduled 17 games this season so the answer will play itself out.
Cocoa Beach has only won one game in their brief club tenure so head coach Kevin Ebright has his work cut out for him but you have to give him props for taking this step. Last year’s team only scored more than 4 goals once and the defense gave up double digits in each game so the only direction to go is up.
Edgewood finished last year at 3-10 but at least knows it can compete with Cocoa, as they won both encounters last season handily and also chalked up a win over varsity squad Eau Gallie. But the same issue in their losses of goals against jumps out as they yielded 96 goals to the other five District members not named Cocoa.
Coach David Blumenthal has assumed the top spot and he wrote in with his thoughts:
“Offensively our key players will be Taylor Watkins, Junior Midfielder, Adam Lawrence, Sophomore Midfielder, Andrew Preston, Sophomore Midfielder, Dylan Fey, Junior Midfielder, as well as Kyle Eastman, Junior Attack, Joseph Vanderlaan, Sophomore Attack, and Ryan Sass, Junior Attack.
Defensively, key players are JR Houston, Senior and Connor McGowan, Junior.
Merritt Island, Viera and Rockledge have been around as a program longer than we have, so I would say these are the teams that we will use to measure our progress as a growing program.
Our goal will be to qualify for District playoffs, with an overall record at or above .500.”
Back to main preview page
