No offense to the old school stick-and-ball sports of American football, basketball, and baseball — but Palm Harbor is a soccer hotbed.
Our area always has been, since the day the school opened in the late 1990s. It’s our way, and it hasn’t wavered. If you have respect for the most popular game the world has ever created? You live in the right place.
Coming into December, PHU’s girls soccer team and boys soccer teams are both ranked in the Top 50 in the nation according to the Maxpreps.com winter high school soccer rankings. PHU’s girls (6-0-1 record) are No. 12 in the country and the boys (6-0-0) are No. 39. Both are also cruising through their Tampa Bay Champions League brackets. And on Tuesday, they also found out that all field repairs are done after two months of inactivity, and they will be able to host home matches from here on.
MaxPreps PHU Girls Soccer Page/Schedule (with national rankings)
MaxPreps PHU Boys Soccer Page/Schedule (with national rankings)
In just 27 years, our program has nine overall state championship trophies — six with the girls and three with the boys.
This season has all of the markings of another good year. The boys and girls varsity teams are a combined 12-0-1, outscoring the competition 67-8 in those 13 matches. When you add in that the JV girls are 2-0-1, you begin to get the picture.
In November, our girls team had so many players sign with Division I college programs that they had to go out and find a long table. Alyssa Tutas and her twin Ava Tutas are heading to Oklahoma and South Carolina respectively, while current leading scorer McKenna Egan signed with Western Kentucky and star goalkeeper Keely Cash is heading to Troy in Alabama. Lindsay Nicholson — who played with PHU since her freshman year — has signed with Southern Methodist — and Addison Mahaney (former Purdue commit) will also land on her feet in college soccer soon enough.
Even at a soccer hotbed like PHU, it is as impressive a scholarship haul as the program has ever seen — even with nearly 100 girls signing since the school opened in 1997.
“Any time you’re at PHU, you have high expectations,” said current PHU girls coach Randy Irick, who led the Hurricanes to their most recent state title in 2019 when he was in his second season. “On paper? With the experience we have? I would say yes that this rivals what we had in 2018-19 (when PHU won it all) but paper doesn’t win championships. Building that chemistry and putting players in the right place to win games? That’s the key.”
The boys’ senior-laden team looks on paper like the best the program has seen in at least a decade — winning its last state title in 2009 when these current players were toddlers. It is coming off of a state-playoff season.
One constant battle these days for any varsity program is what its future elite players are hearing from their college coaching staffs, along with their club coaches. Alyssa Tutas is fired up about the potential of winning a state title, but Oklahoma would love to have her on campus starting in January — a not so uncommon practice in big-time athletics. There is spring soccer in college just like there is spring football.
“I’m planning to graduate in December and will leave for Oklahoma in January to play with them in the spring season,” Tutas told PalmHarborSports. “I’ll mainly remember the atmosphere and energy at home games playing at night, under the lights, and in front of a crowd of PHU students for the first time.”
With Irick in charge of the girls varsity and Thurstan Johnstan in his second year with the boys, the soccer program is in good shape. Both had nearly 80 players show up on the first day of tryouts, and since Pinellas County doesn’t allow for boys junior varsity soccer (don’t get me started on this topic), Johnstan had to cut nearly two-thirds of the boys who aspired to play at PHU.
While many high schools in Pinellas can’t even fill a varsity soccer roster, PHU is forced to push away talent that could be on a JV boys team. But again, that’s because we’re living in a hotbed.
The prestigious Tampa Bay Champions League, the brainchild of many area soccer gurus — including former CCC legend and club coach Jim Harte, who has also coached many youth players in our area — has PHU’s girls and boys in good position so far, thanks to early results.
The TB Champions League addition to the schedule has taken the place of weekend tournaments that aren’t quite as popular today as they once were, thanks to county rules. Irick is a huge advocate of what Harte and all of the other tournament visionaries have been building.
“When I played, we had the big Pizza Hut Tournament, a four-day tournament,” Irick said. “What makes today’s Champions League so unique is that all of the games are more competitive games. Spacing those into our schedule simulates what a state tournament run really is like. It helps you as a coach to prepare for the next team, and practices, and what you need to work on — for gamefilm and for state.”
Irick said having his girls play in the TBCL title game at Al Lang Stadium last year will always be a team memory. Aside from making the state playoffs, making the Tampa Bay Champions League championship is a massive goal for both PHU teams. He credits an experienced staff of Katrina Martin (8th year), Paige Cormier (4th year, former player at PHU), Wipoj Huse (1st year, former boys coach), and Shawn Francis (1st year) of adding a ton of experience and knowledge to the group and helping it grow.
‘Tis the season for soccer at PHU, and it’s a wonderful season.
