While Miami and Tampa receive the most spotlight for developing athletes in the State of Florida, southwest Florida is a quiet hotbed for professional athletes. While the region is especially thriving with great talent recently, the area has effectively produced some amazing athletes for quite some time.
Deion Sanders, the 2011 National Football League Hall of Famer and current head coach of the University of Colorado Football team, graduated from North Fort Myers High School. Sanders’s impact has greatly improved recognition and prestige among the local high school’s athletic programs.
Shane McClanahan is a baseball pitcher who has spent his entire career with the Tampa Bay Rays. He moved to Cape Coral early in his life and attended high school there as well. After the Rays drafted him in the 2018 MLB Draft, he has blossomed into a rising superstar.
McClanahan has received the honor of being a two-time All-Star in Major League Baseball and has been the starting pitcher for the Tampa Bay Rays since 2022.
The National Football League is also sprinkled with Southwest Florida talent. Sammy Watkins, a product of South Fort Myers High School, was drafted fourth overall in the 2014 NFL draft. While he failed to exceed talent at the highest level of football, Watkins still holds a record in Lee County for the most receiving yards in his career.
Watkins was a part of the Kansas City Chiefs’ triumph in Super Bowl 54. The City of South Fort Myers awarded Sammy Watkins a ceremonial key to the city. Watkins has come back to the area several times, and in 2022 he held a youth football camp in Fort Myers.
Football is prominent in Southwest Florida, meaning many star athletes like Sammy Watkins are from there
Southwest Florida also boasts a wealth of defensive talent on the football field. J.C. Jackson was born in Immokalee and attended Immokalee High School. He went undrafted but was later picked up by the New England Patriots. In his first season, he won Super Bowl 53 against the Los Angeles Rams, and Jackson led the league in pass deflections in 2021.
Jackson came back to Immokalee High School in 2022 along with Pro Football Hall of Famer and Immokalee High School alum Edgerrin James. The two spoke of their humble roots in Immokalee and hoped to inspire future student-athletes to make a mark of their own.
In addition to talent on the field, Southwest Florida has gifted athletes on the racetrack. Coming from unusual roots, Ross Chastain is an 8th-generation watermelon farmer from Alva in Lee County.
His unorthodox roots resulted in one of the most unique win celebrations in sports: a smashing of a watermelon while on top of his car. His unique celebration was so well received that Darvish Bhola reported that,”[Chastian entered] a partnership with the National Watermelon Association.” The National Watermelon Association works to promote and represent the watermelon industry.
In 2019, Chastain went to South Fort Myers High School and visited the school’s Automotive Academy, and even attempted to fix a car’s transmission with the students.
NASCAR is a staple in Southwest Florida thanks to the Daytona Speedway.
In the 2022 NASCAR season, Chastain had a breakout season and collected his first two wins in his Cup Series Career. He reached NASCAR’s Playoffs and made the Round of 8, and capped it off with an iconic move nicknamed the” Hail Melon.” The move received 1.8 million views on YouTube, 9 months after it was posted.
Connecting back to the athlete’s SWFL origin, in 2019, Chastain went to South Fort Myers High School visited the school’s Automotive Academy, and even attempted to fix a car’s transmission with the students.
It is nice to know that Southwest Florida athletes are doing well, but it is even nicer that they are returning to the community to help the next generation behind them.
