SARASOTA, Fla. (WWSB) – When the ABC7 Sports Department launched last year we started our Athlete of the Week project.

Last Spring we had a chance to honor an athlete from Manatee County and Sarasota County as our Athlete of the Year for those respective counties.

In Manatee, we surprised a football player… who was just a few days away from leaving the Suncoast to head to college.

Cory Sanders graduated from Manatee High School in May and is now attending Missouri Valley College on a football scholarship.

Parrish Community High School had some stand out moments in 2024.

One of those was the softball team winning a state championship during the final week of school for students.

For some of the players like Ella Romano, this was the ultimate going out on top moment.

“It means so much to me,” Romano said. “To go back-to-back and just to even be back here again, it doesn’t feel real. These amazing girls, amazing team, amazing coaches, it just feels amazing.”

On the other mound for Parrish, former Bulls baseball star Troy Guthrie seeing a childhood dream come true when he was drafted during the summer to the Toronto Blue Jays in the 2024 MLB Draft.

However, just a few months before he was making plans to head to college at Florida Gulf Coast University on a baseball scholarship and he was excited for that opportunity.

“The coaches and the atmosphere down there is just incredible,” Guthrie said. “They loved me since day one. It just feels like home.”

While the summer was a triumphant time for some, the fall brought challenges for especially in the months of September and October when Hurricanes Helene and Milton happened.

Many of our local student athletes jumped into action, but wrestlers for Parrish Community High School really rallied together when one of their own lost everything.

The school’s head wrestling coach, Tyler Small, and his family lost their home due to a fire during Milton.

He and his family did evacuate away from the Suncoast before the storm made landfall, which is something that they originally were not going to do.

“We were going to ride it out,” Small said. “Originally, it was supposed to hit more so up Tampa and we’ve gone through Category ones, two and threes before.”

Thanks to help from so many, Small and family have been able to move forward in a new home and they are forever grateful.

“We just have some awesome support systems throughout, whether it’s family, communities through our jobs,” Small said. “Obviously, working at a school you have a lot of people willing to pitch in and help out.”

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