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Tampa Bay Juniors Win East Coast Championship

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By NICHOLAS J.E. MURRAY The Tampa Tribune

The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 7, 2008

The Tampa Bay Invaders under-14 boys volleyball team won the East Coast Championship with a 25-20, 25-17 win against the Pace Rochester Bootleggers from New York. The victory earned the team a place in the 2008 open national championships, which will be held in Salt Lake City.

The team pulled athletes from places other than Tampa, with some players coming from as far away as Melbourne and Naples. The squad of Kyle Dagostino, Justin Vogel, Simon Moskovitz, Francis Berriois-Hernandez, Austin Aikens, Alajandro Costas, Nick Burgess and Johnny Gomez reached the club tournament last year as under-13s in the program's first year, and are now stepping up to the top level of competition.

"We only began the program last year," Coach Randy Dagostino said. "We've trained much more extensively this year. They started at the same time as the girls teams did, even though they didn't play in as many tournaments, they've been training since January. They've improved a great deal."

And that has come because, in part, Dagostino has worked mainly on the team's game strategy as opposed to playing technique. The differences in physicality between the boys and girls game means the coaches need to approach both differently.

"This is a very physical team," Dagostino said. "Just the physical play allows you to coach them differently. Whether I may spend hours and days and weeks working on technique with the girls, you do a lot more team and game strategy work with the boys because they don't have the experience, they haven't been around the game, but their physicality, you'll mess them up if you teach them too much technique. They just flow with the game so well that if you try to break apart every part of the game, which you have to do sometimes with the girls, it's going to confuse them and short-circuit them."

With the limited tournament experience, Dagostino said the team has visibly improved in every game it has played. An example of this came in the ECC's second round of pool play, where the Invaders lost their only game of the tournament to Team High Intensity from Texas, 25-22, 23-25, 15-11.

The Invaders won through to bracket play with wins in their other two games, and after a pair of wins had kept them in the winners side of the bracket, they got a rematch with High Intensity. The Invaders won in straight sets that time around, 25-23, 25-15.

"I was watching them play at this event, and I was saying, 'These kids are getting better every single time they play in a game,'" Dagostino said. "At the end of that tournament, there was no question that they were the most talented team there."

The win gives the Tampa Bay Juniors program a third team in the open division national championships, with the programs girls under-15 and under-16 teams also having advanced to their respective tournaments. The girls under-17 team also has made the club division tournament.

Local Teams Excited For Trip To Cooperstown

The Temple Terrace Stars, Tampa Ravens and Tampa Cyclones head to Cooperstown, N.Y., this weekend to play in the opening tournament of the Cooperstown Dream Park's summer series of events.

The park runs 11 weeks of tournaments, with 98 teams playing seven games apiece to open the tournament before each team enters a bracket determined by record. For the Stars, who won the Florida AAU state championship three weeks ago, the trip will be the first time the team has played a tournament outside Florida.

"It's pretty neat," Stars manager Steve Terp said. "It's kind of the culmination for a kid who's been playing competitive ball for a while to get to go up there, not only because of the tournament, but also because of the skills stuff they do. They have skills tournaments we've been practicing for in addition to just getting ready to play."

The skills competitions include a home run derby, and fielding competitions for infielders and outfielders. Last year, the Tampa Cobras won the "Around The Horn" competition during their tournament week.

The Ravens, who have Alonso High coach Landy Faedo leading them, also are looking forward to making the trip. For Faedo, it will be not only his players' first trip to Cooperstown, but also his. Faedo said he put the team together after hearing about the tournament from other players and parents.

"A lot of the kids I coached in high school played there, and talking to the parents they were always really positive about the experiences they had," Faedo said. "They would tell us, 'you need to do it, you need to do it,' so I decided to put a little team together, take my son up there."

With two games a day for the opening three days of the tournament, there will be a lot of baseball played for all the teams, but the coaches are expecting that they and their players will get a chance to tour the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.

"It gives an opportunity to play a lot of different teams," Faedo said. "But also it'll be the first time a lot of these kids will go to the state of New York, and they'll be able to visit Cooperstown, so we'll be able to visit the Hall of Fame while we're up there. It'll be a first for me too, so I'm looking forward to it."

SOCCER: The United Soccer League Super-Y League opens this weekend, with RSL Florida and Hillsborough County United teams looking to qualify for the North American finals in the fall.

According to RSL general manager Adrian Bush, the Super-Y league provides a summer league that gives the programs top competition through the summer.

"Everyone's goal is to get to the North American finals," Bush said. "The way they do it makes it one of the top events in the country. Great competition, only one game a day, it's done the right way."

RSL has teams entered in all four girls divisions, and four of the five boys divisions. The under-17 team includes players like Domenic Cutrofello, Greg Sasser and Brian Fekete who got valuable experience in the event this time last year as 16-year-olds.

Bush thinks that will be important as they try to advance out of their group.

"It's a good group," Bush said. "We lost to West Kendall in the State Cup tournament on penalty kicks, we've added some players, and it's going to be a great league."

HCU is only competing in the boys division, with their under-16 team leading the way. They open their schedule at home to FC Sarasota today at noon.

Nicholas J.E. Murray can be reached at (813) 259-8243 or nmurray@tampatrib.com. Keyword: Youth Sports for more news, notes and live game stories.

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