We know that South Tampa’s favorite football team, Plant High , is the defending Class 4-A state champion and has enough talent returning to possibly enable Coach Robert Weiner’s Panthers to make another run. That’s pretty heady stuff.
What’s no less important is that Weiner’s efforts to hone championship skills and inculcate a winning football mentality are only part of his charge as he sees it.
Last week Weiner, the English teacher/head coach, once again did what he’s done for the last 27 years: volunteer as a Muscular Dystrophy Association camp counselor. One of his assistants, T.J. Lane, has been doing it for 15 years. And this summer Weiner brought along two of his blue-chip Plant players, wide receiver Derek Winter and quarterback Aaron Murray.
“I tell my football players all the time that we have campers who would literally die to do what they do, who would die for one moment to run through the goal posts, through the smoke with the cheering crowd, and not even play a down,” explains Weiner. “Too often we take things for granted