Weeki Wachee football celebrates its first winning season

Hornets complete regular season with 7-3 record

The Weeki Wachee football team poses in front of the scoreboard after defeating county-rival Hernando for the first time on Oct. 25, 2024. / Patrick Skipper

Since Weeki Wachee High first opened its doors back in 2010, the football program has struggled to find its footing.

Hernando County’s newest high school opted to field only a junior varsity team its first two years of existence and over their first 12 varsity campaigns the Hornets compiled a 30-87 mark, including two 0-10 seasons.

This year they’ve significantly altered that narrative. With a 43-9 thumping of Citrus last Friday, the Hornets wrapped up a 7-3 regular season, by far the best in school history and the first to end with a winning record.

“We feel pretty good about it,” Weeki Wachee head coach Justin Bland said. “Obviously it’s huge for the program, the school, the kids. My senior group this year, they were a group that went 0-10 their freshman year. 

“So to go 0-10 and then every year they’ve gotten better, and to finish that off with 7-3, that’s huge. Especially at a school and a program that’s never won more than four games in a year. They’ve never had a winning season, they’ve never even been .500. So it’s huge. 

“Everything going forward and stuff like that, and what we’re trying to build out here, that culture, stuff like that. It’s huge to get that kind of started.”

Bland, who last week was named District 10 Coach of the Year by the Florida Athletic Coaches Association, is in his first year at the helm but is hardly a newcomer. The Hernando High graduate has been a longtime assistant coach in the county, spending the previous two seasons as associate head coach at Weeki Wachee under Jon Malandrucco.

“He did a great job his first two years, too,” Bland said of Malandrucco. “Coming in and kind of laying the foundation, he made my job a little bit easier. This year was like, ‘Hey, you know what? The foundation is laid.’ Now let’s focus on these things, like the mentality, the dedication, that side of things that you can spend a little more attention to because now he did such a great job Year 1 and 2 of teaching them football that the quality of football was better. Now we can pay more attention to these certain things.”

Since going 0-10 in 2021, the Hornets have experienced steady improvement, from 2-8 in 2022 to 4-5 last season. However, they still hadn’t shaken the stigma of perennially failing.

“They grew and got better every year, and this year I think this group of seniors, they were just tired of losing,” Bland said. “You walk around campus and your fellow peers and stuff like that, they talk to you, saying, ‘Hey, the football team stinks.’ It’s this and that. They were tired of hearing about it.

“When I got hired last December, I came in and it was a mentality thing that we had to change. These kids adapted right away to it and they just started saying, ‘Coach, what do we need to do? How much harder do we need to work to turn this thing around?’ And I set an expectation for those kids and this group went beyond that.

“They showed up every single day. The hard work and the dedication that they showed to turning this thing around this year, I think that’s the biggest thing that stood out from the senior class, that they were determined to just basically do whatever I needed them to do for it to pay off in the end.”

A senior-laden roster led by Donovan Roberts, Brock Rosario, Daniel Young, Luke Pasmore, Tyler Ciccio, Alex Wilson and Eryk Marcuccio brought experience to the mix. But they also had players who put up numbers. Junior quarterback Richard Hanshaw has completed 86 of 177 passes for 1,287 yards with 18 touchdowns against eight interceptions. 

He has additionally rushed for 404 yards and five touchdowns, complementing fellow junior Leelan Wright, who’s run for 1,009 yards and nine touchdowns. Wilson leads the team in receiving with 26 catches for 526 yards and nine touchdowns. Michael Schmidt has added five receiving touchdowns and Rosario has three.
Rosario, also a linebacker, has compiled a team-best 94 tackles and sophomore James Nielson has 12 1/2 sacks. Wilson and sophomore Keavin Moss are tied for the team lead with three interceptions.

“Defensively we just went from a 3-5 to a 4-4. There was nothing crazy, crazy there,” Bland said. “As far as offensively, we just made a couple of changes. We went to more of a spread offense kind of look and it opened things up.

“… You talk about Hanshaw, you talk about Leeland Wright, our running back. Those guys are juniors. They’re coming back next year. So we’re excited to see what the future holds, as well, moving forward.”

The season got off to a rough start with a 40-22 home loss against Sunlake. But wins over Orangewood Christian and Tenoroc made the Hornets 2-1 heading into the Battle of Hexam game at Central on Sept. 13, an annual contest named after the road that virtually connects the two schools.

Weeki Wachee ended up blowing a 14-2 fourth-quarter lead that night and fell 15-14 to lose the trophy that goes to the game’s annual winner.

The Hornets outscored their next three opponents – Anclote, Hollins and Bishop McLaughlin – by a combined 115-26. That set them up for a critical District 3A-7 showdown on Oct. 18 at Crystal River that ended up going to the Pirates, 14-6.

Crystal River locked up the district the following week. Meanwhile, Weeki Wachee hosted the preseason district favorite, Hernando.

The Leopards came in having won four in a row, including 28-24 over a strong Lecanto team a week earlier, and were averaging 34.8 points per game over that streak. Yet the Hornets kept them out of the end zone and won 7-3.

“It was a big win for the program. First time ever in school history that a varsity football team has beaten Hernando. So that was huge,” Bland said. “That was a big one for me, too, being a Hernando alumni, coming over here and coming to a place that has struggled finding success.

“You go 5-3 at that point, your big signature win. We lost to Crystal River the week before, so the district title hopes were out the window. The kids shifted to you know what, we’ve never beaten Hernando. That’s our next goal, let’s go beat Hernando. And they responded. It was a tight ballgame through and through. That game could have went either way at any point.”

The first 10 meetings of the all-time series had gone to the Leopards, nearly all of them in blowout fashion. 

“I think a lot of that Hernando win, it gave a lot of these kids and it gave the school confidence that you know what we can go and compete and win big football games,” Bland said. “That’s something this school really hasn’t had.”

Even with the good record, the Hornets are not highly ranked in the region and don’t seem likely to rise up into playoff positioning. Bland admitted the Central loss could prove costly. Officially, though, they sit in a holding pattern.

“If Friday night (against Citrus) was the end of the line for this season, it’s definitely a heck of a success this year and it’s a great building block going into the offseason,” Bland said. “Either way, I couldn’t be more proud of this group of guys, these coaches, everyone that’s involved.”

Weeki Wachee football season-by-season

Year       Record

2012      3-7

2013      3-7

2014      1-9

2015      4-6

2016      0-10

2017      3-7

2018      4-6

2019      3-7

2020      3-5

2021      0-10

2022      2-8

2023      4-5

2024      7-3

Total      37-90