Palm Harbor Football Embarks on Longest Road Trip of 2024 Friday

TRAVEL/TICKETS NOTES: Parrish Community High School is located at 7505 Fort Hamer Rd, Parrish, FL 34219 and the fastest route is going over the Skyway Bridge if you’re leaving from Palm Harbor HS. Length of time obviously depends on traffic but is in the 1 hr, 15-minute range. You can purchase tickets here, and NOTE: GAMETIME IS 7 P.M.: https://gofan.co/event/1650851?schoolId=FL72624

THE GAME STORY

Palm Harbor University’s football program doesn’t often take long bus trips to games, last traveling south of Tampa Bay in 2018. Friday night will be an exception when the team takes a charter bus over the Skyway Bridge to Manatee County to play the relatively new Parrish Community School, which began varsity football in 2020.

PHU (0-2) and Parrish (2-0) have similar histories, though built about 25 years apart. PHU was built to help alleviate nearby high schools’ enrollments and adjust for new community growth, and Parrish came along to help relieve pressure at Lakewood Ranch and Palmetto’s high schools, primarily. The area is still growing.

“There’s an Arbys and a Dunkin Donuts and not much else out here in Parrish right now,” Parrish coach Dylan Clark told PalmHarborSports.com, who was head coach at Tampa Alonso a few years back and has faced PHU before. “But we have some really good kids, a great community and administration and this is our first regular season home game, and we have a quality opponent coming in Palm Harbor. We’re excited.”

PALM HARBOR FOOTBALL SCHOOL HISTORY: Year by Year

Though Parrish is 2-0 and PHU is 0-2, the records in this case are a bit deceiving and the matchup may end up feeling closer on Friday. Parrish’s two wins (North Port and Bayshore) were over programs that are a combined 0-4 and have been outscored 130-3 so far in 2024. PHU’s opponents (Tarpon Springs and Calvary Christian) are 3-1 and were a combined 18-4 last year — and last week, PHU played Tarpon Springs tough on the road, falling 14-10.

After a tough preseason classic game and opener against Calvary Christian, PHU showed promise last week. Sr./RB Jaxon Wilson had the best game of his career, rushing for 133 critical yards in the grudge match, helping to control the clock the way PHU is built to play. An injury-riddled O-line pushed its way to 240 rushing yards on the night, and Jr./WR Jake Rennert proved once again he can be that change-of-pace player on offense.

“That’s the Jaxon I’m used to seeing, nothing about it caught me off guard,” Palm Harbor coach Mike Mullaney told PalmHarborSports.com. “He’s a captain of our team. Obviously, we got better between week one and week two. I don’t know if we could have beaten any team in America that first week, but we got up for Tarpon Springs with it being a neighborhood game.

“The kids responded and were more physical, which is the way we play. I think if we play that (Tarpon) game several times, we win several of them.”

Defensively, PHU had some things to build on. Tarpon Springs’ Makih Johnson — a UConn verbal commitment who reports 11 FBS scholarship offers certainly “did his thing” — but beyond that, PHU did a good job slowing things down. The ‘Canes did a decent job with Soph./QB Joaquin Kavouklis (already offered by Arkansas, Syracuse, Virginia Tech, West Virginia, and USF among others), who finished with 9-of-20 passing, 5 going to Johnson.

PHU Jr./LB Ryan Fuelling is beginning to settle into his role in the middle, something Gunner Fodor and Ian Seibert did well in the recent past as defensive coordinator Matt Lepain’s “coach on the field”. Sr./DL-OL Zach Horner has been special on both sides of the ball, as has his line-of-scrimmage colleague, Jr./OL-DL Karter Allen. Horner and Allen have been blocks of granite, metaphorically speaking — as they’ve only been coming out for special teams plays.

Sr./DL-FB cornerstone Brady Messick even returned from injury and toted the football a few times effectively as a fullback as he began to claw back to full speed. Messick will get reps on defense this week too as he continues to recover from a shoulder injury.

PHU did manage to get a bit of its 2023 black-and-blue style identity back last week and look to continue that this week against a 2-0 opponent that like the Hurricanes made the playoffs last year.

Mullaney said he is impressed with how Parrish flies around and to the ball, and also with how the Bulls handled Osceola in the spring game. Osceola and PHU had some competitive games in the past two seasons.

“We want to be physical and well-coached and aggressive,” Parrish’s Clark said. “We want to be a downhill football team, where we try to run it with strength while playing tough defense.”

Parrish Community has improved each year of its existence. In its first varsity season of 2020, it was winless. The next year it won three, then four in 2022 — and then 7-4, and the playoffs last year in the program’s first season under Clark.

Bulls Jr./QB Brycen Volz has been incredibly efficient, completing 16-of-22 passes with no INTs this year, with 208 yards and a TD. He leads a very balanced offensive attack. The defense has made a slew of negative yardage plays.

NOTEWORTHY

SCHOOL RECORD DEPT.: Three-year starting placekicker Mitchell Stricker has a career-long 47-yard field goal and 2 PATs this season in the first two games, bringing his career points total to 78 — tying the school record of Logan Ruby’s two-year total from 2011-12.

Stricker also now has 10 career field goals, second in school history only to Danny Shea (13 FGs from 1999-2000), and his career-long field goal from a week ago at Tarpon Springs is tied for the third longest in PHU history with three other players. Kicking has always been a strength of the PHU program.

“Stricker puts the time and the effort into it; he works hard at it,” Mullaney said. “He’s added punting duties this year … and he’s handling kickoffs now too. Last week against Tarpon he put two kickoffs in the endzone and two of them on the half-inch line. He has the leg strength.”

HOW’D THIS UNIQUE MATCHUP HAPPEN?: We’ll let Parrish coach Dylan Clark explain: “To be completely honest, it’s as simple as when Coach Mullaney posted online that they were looking for a new opponent to play in week three, I reached out to Michael Walters, who I know and who used to coach basketball there, and he gave me Mike (Mullaney’s) number. I texted him and told him I’d love to play you guys in week three. I knew they finished 8-3 last year and we’re building things here and I thought it’d be a really good matchup.”