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7 Plant Athletes Sign With Colleges

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By ADAM ADKINS, The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 15, 2007

TAMPA - It was a packed house Wednesday morning inside Plant High's media center for National Signing Day. And that had nothing to do with spectators.

Plant had Hillsborough County's largest signing-day celebration Wednesday, with seven athletes signing Division I national letters-of-intent on the first day high school seniors were permitted to do so with their chosen college programs.

Baseball players Preston Tucker (Florida), David Bergin (Georgia Southern), Jared Womack (High Point), Tyler Stinson (Navy) and Logan Welch (Maryland) were joined by volleyball standout Kellie Catanach (Duke) and softball player Hannah Ojeda (N.C. State), a group that signified the athletic prowess of the South Tampa school.

"I like it this way," Catanach said of the plethora of Plant athletes signing together. "We get to represent our school together, and I think our school is proud of how far we're going to go."

No one else seemed to mind sharing the spotlight, either.

Much of the attention was focused toward the baseball team's volume of signees as many in attendance wondered aloud whether they were witnessing some type of record signing for one team.

Plant baseball coach Dennis Braun is no stranger to talented teams. He was an assistant at Seminole in 2001, when the Warhawks had eight players selected in that year's MLB draft after an unblemished state-championship season. And while he thinks that Seminole squad had his current squad beat in the scholarship-signing category, he said his group's accomplishment Wednesday was still a significant one.

"Certainly this is a very large class, one that you don't get all the time. We're proud to have them all here. They're a good group of kids," said Braun, adding the main reasons the five baseball players found their way to the signing tables was "hard work and doing the right things at the time."

While Plant's baseball program trumped every other county program in volume, several others produced multiple signees. Chamberlain's softball program - Mary Kate Smith (Stanford), Gina Kafalas (USF) and Danielle Moreda (Saint Leo) - and Riverview's softball program - Ashley McClain (Florida International), Dianne Gonzalez (Saint Leo) and Brittany Yates (Saint Leo) - each had three.

Reporter Adam Adkins can be

reached at (813) 657-4533 or

aadkins@tampatrib.com.

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