The water tower at Plant High School that shadows over Dad’s Stadium reads, “Plant High School, Home of State Champions.” In two Fridays, that mantra may become true again with the way Plant’s football team has been playing. The Panthers are currently having their best playoff run since 2011, when they won their last State Championship.
It’s a program that had only three district championships from 1980-2005, one that had such a quick and major turnaround, one only has to wonder how it was done, how the longevity has come about.
Before we get into that, let’s look to the task at hand on Friday night. The Panthers are at home, where they haven’t lost at all this season, or last season, or the season before that, or the season before that, okay, okay, you get the gist. Plant hasn’t lost at home since 2009 in the first week of the season against Tampa Bay Tech. Needless to say, Dad’s Stadium is a hostile place to play.
Jacksonville’s Robert E. Lee will travel to Dad’s looking for an upset (but is it really an upset this deep in the playoffs?), to travel to Orlando to face the winner of Venice and St. Thomas Aquinas. More on STA later. But here’s the task. QB Derrick Jones has thrown and rushed for 20 touchdowns. He’s already eclipsed the 2,000-yard passing mark, and is about to eclipse the 1,000-yard rushing mark.
“Their quarterback is certainly not a small or frail guy. Tackling is going to become a very important thing, especially this deep into the playoffs. We have to be able to tackle, to not allow them second chances. If we can do that, we’ve got a good chance against their defense. Bartram Trail really exposed some holes in their defense, some that we are looking to take advantage of,” said Plant Head Coach Robert Weiner.
Weiner, who’s been the play-caller since 2004, has already won his 12th district title in a row, reached his seventh Final Four in the past 11 years, appeared in five state title games, and won four of them. The last two could grow with a win in the next two weeks.
So, how did Plant go from worst to first in a matter of two years with Weiner at the helm?
“When I had my first meeting with the community of Plant High, we had about 21 on varsity, and a little more on JV. I told everybody in that auditorium that Plant High School would win a State Championship. Sure, I heard the people in the hallways talking about how silly it was, but we never backed down from that. Our motto at Plant is, ‘strength through unity,’ and we’ve embodied that through our commitment to the people we have,” said Weiner.
This year, it’s fairly easy to do when there’s a guy at quarterback who’s in the conversation for BCP player of the year. That man: Dane Frantzen. You can read my in-depth story with him here, but we’ve constantly talked about the need for him to have very big, and very productive games. Last year, this was a player that was in a dual-QB system with Kyle Trina. Now, he’s leading his Panthers to a chance at a state championship.
“In terms of actual competitiveness, there is nobody that compares to him. His ability to compete is incredible. He’s loved Plant football since he was a little boy, and he’s always dreamed about being the quarterback of this high school and to play the games that could give us a state championship. It’s not even about how good of a player he is,” Weiner said of his quarterback who already has 2,109 passing yards and 1,323 rushing yards, “but it’s the intangibles that he will never speak about.”
It’s the guys like Frantzen that have the dedication and the desire to be a Plant Panther that has driven the program to be the way it is today. The commitment from guys like Robert Marve who now help with the team’s operations. It’s the coaching staff that has stuck around with Weiner since the days that they functioned as assistant coaches at Jesuit under Dom Ciao. For those who remember the days when USF Head Coach Willie Taggert was finding his staff in 2013, Weiner turned down the job to stay with Plant.
“The consistency of this program is especially hard to put into one statement. I think a couple of things it’s a result of is the commitment of the players that pass through our halls, and especially the vision of our mission as a program. Then, you have to look at the consistency of the coaching staff. The real bread and butter of this program is in our assistant coaches. Some of them have been with me for forever, they’ve come back to the program, but they show the kids what it means to be a Plant Panther.”
Look at this playoff bracket alone in Class 7A: all four of the teams left are ranked in the top ten in MaxPreps’ Florida rankings, and every team except for Mater Academy Charter is in the top 40 in the the same rankings. The competitiveness of 7A is off the charts. A familiar foe for Plant lies in both Venice and St. Thomas Aquinas, in which there is some history between them.
Plant was pitted against STA in the 2010 state championship game, where the Panthers lost 29-7. It was the last times that those teams played. “We had some difficulties, I mean we had their offense pinned on their own four-yard line and then their running back broke a 96-yard run that completely changed the game, but it was certainly a challenge for us,” said Weiner.
After the 2010 championship, St. Thomas Aquinas won a pair of national championships en route to being the powerhouse they are in Ft. Lauderdale.
But there’s still Lee. There’s still a state championship trophy that doesn’t have an owner. This is a special Plant team, one that could quite possibly grab that championship in two weeks. It’s a team that has already won several big games against Armwood, Winter Haven, Lakeland, and Viera. This team has the identity of a traditional Plant team – one that has a chance to do great things, but also there’s a little bit of difference between this team and years of the past.
“There’s honestly a lot more similarities than differences from those past teams. There is an unbreakable unity in what goes on with Plant football – sometimes when one person moves in the wrong direction, they tend to sway in that wrong direction, but we have kids that do not stray from the path. We’ve got an excellent group of kids. I told them at the beginning of the season that they were a special bunch, that they really had a chance to go out and win a championship, but our win over Armwood really solidified it. When we beat Armwood, we knew we could go out and compete at an extremely high level, and it gave the guys a real confidence to go through the rest of the season,” Weiner said.
Plant’s confidence has grown and continued to show, especially smacking around Viera in a physical affair, claiming victory 35-7. Remember in the first round, the Panthers blew out Winter Haven 59-6. The Panthers have hit their stride at the right time, an important factor in their quest for their fifth state championship since 2006.