BABCOCK RANCH – When Jeff Irwin arrived at Babcock Ranch five years ago, there were about 250 people in the community with school buildings going up in an empty field.
Today as one turns into the parking lot at Babcock High School – whose student body now rivals the population on Irwin’s first day in town – one is greeted by the visage of a football stadium’s grandstand. It welcomes all comers to what will be a state-of-the-art recreation complex constructed by Babcock Ranch’s spare-few-expenses creators.
Beyond the football field with its newly installed artificial surface, a soccer field is taking shape. Beyond that, finishing touches are going into the baseball and softball fields, each sporting the same coconut-husk fill artificial turf the Tampa Bay Rays recently installed at Tropicana Field.
“We’ve just added and added,” Irwin said. “It’s amazing how quickly we’ve grown.”
The Field House where the Trailblazers play basketball and volleyball was already on par with the other high schools in Charlotte County, with room to expand as needed.
Irwin had been lured to Babcock Ranch from Indiana, in part, by the opportunity to work with a blank slate. He wasn’t prepared for just how blank that slate was.
“It’s the hardest job I’ve ever had,” Irwin said. “Because nothing is established. There are things I’ve never had to think about that I have to think about here.”
A good example: Procuring track and field equipment. Where does one buy a pole vault pit cushion, anyway?
An even better example: Realizing there needs to be a building constructed to store that track and field equipment.
“Right now, I’m trying to figure out everything in our baseball program, all the things we’re going to need,” Irwin said, adding that he’s still searching for a coach, as well.
Meanwhile, there’s the red tape that goes with a start-up athletics program. Babcock is completing a two-year probationary period with the FHSAA and is expected to be rubber-stamped into the association later this spring. The goal is for Babcock to be full FHSAA participants in all sports … eventually.
One big program that is still on the outside looking in is football. While volleyball, cross country and golf are a full-go in the FHSAA next school year, the Trailblazers football team will take the field for its inaugural season this fall as an eight-man program competing in the Sunshine State Athletic Conference.
“We’ll be constantly re-evaluating what to do, whether we stay at eight or go to 11-man,” Irwin said. “If we go to 11, then we could go to the FHSAA and join a district.
“Every other sport that we offer in high school will be in play for district championships starting this fall.”
Winter will feature boys and girls basketball as well as boys and girls soccer. Spring, of course, means baseball and softball, as well as boys and girls track and tennis.
While several of the sports have been under way for a couple of years now, albeit on a truncated slate, football will officially get its start a week from Monday when new head football coach Andy Habing welcomes players to the school’s first-ever spring practice.
Irwin’s pitch to lure Habing was an easy one to make, and one he has a luxury to sell to any prospective coaching hires.
“The ability to create from the ground up, creating your own culture and traditions,” Irwin said. “Nothing’s been established here. There’s no ‘this is the way we do it here’ to deal with.”
Habing, who played football at Miami-Ohio, came to Babcock Ranch from the Columbus, Ohio area.
“My wife and I fell in love with the neighborhood,” Habing said. “I have three kids, as well, all middle school and high school age, but I just wanted to be a part of sports in this neighborhood. I felt really strongly about the benefits that kids receive from being a participant in a team sport and how sports positively affects a community.”
Not long after his arrival, Habing began pitching in wherever he was needed as the various Babcock athletic programs continued to cycle through their startup phase.
“He took on a lot of things this year,” Irwin said. “He’s been an assistant football coach for 20 years, but he’s helped with basketball. He was our cross country coach, too.”
Habing has also been something of a de facto strength and conditioning coach – another one of those programs most schools never have to think about that Babcock is dealing with for the first time.
“It’s been really fun,” Habing said. “It’s exciting to be on the startup end of things and have your hand in the design of what we’re doing and projecting what we need. It’s also been a bit of a daunting task, making sure we have all the materials and all the things we need.”
Habing said there is palpable excitement in the school for football. Roughly 35 kids have been routine participants in morning weight training and conditioning.
One of the last pieces of the puzzle is scheduling, and that’s where Babcock has a unique challenge. The school does not own its facilities. All facilities belong to the wider Babcock Ranch community. The school must pay rent and schedule its events in the same manner as any other entity in town.
That said, no one’s really expecting a conflict with Friday Night Lights, for football is something Babcock’s primary founder, Syd Kitson, knows plenty about. Long before he become a developer of communities, Kitson was a standout offensive lineman for Wake Forest who went on to play for the Green Bay Packers and Dallas Cowboys.
“He is a visionary and one of the things we talked about was how football can bring a community together,” Irwin said. “I’ve always said, even before I came here, that athletics is kind of the front porch of a school. It brings everybody together, from all walks of life. So, yeah, I’ve had a lot of positive feedback from the community about bringing on football.”
At that, Irwin pointed to the football grandstand.
“There it is, right there.”
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