NATIONAL TOURNAMENT

The team has accepted an invitation to play in the presitgious Kingdom of the Sun Tournament this December.  The Kingdom is one of the most prestigious and oldest national tournaments in the country.  It takes place in Ocala, FL at Vanguard High School.  This will be the 3rd appearance for Coach Dziagwa and the Crusaders in this national tournament.  The team played in 1995 after having won the state championship the previous season and in the early 80's when Coach Dziagwa was an assistant.  Some of the participants in this year's tourney are in the who's who of high school basketball.  Vanguard, Leesburg (4A state champs), Olympia and Lake Highland Prep from Orlando, North Marion, Holmes County, Nease, and Riverside (a top team from Milwaukee) have all accepted invitations.  Other teams from Ohio, Georgia, and Kentucky will also be participating. In all there will be 16 teams in the tourney and it should prove to be a great challenge for the young Crusaders. Many players have gone on from the Kingdom to be stars in college and professional basketball.  It will surely be a highlight of the schedule.

The team will also be playing in tournaments in Dunnellon (Thanksgiving), Disney, and Tampa (City Championship).  Two shoot-outs are on the schedule, both in Pinellas County, at Northeast and Seminole High Schools.  The district that TC is in this year has only 3 teams, Berkeley Prep, Sarasota Booker, and TC. And of course TC will be playing Jesuit twice.  It should prove to be a very challenging schedule as the team will only be playing 6 games in the Crusader Castle.  The team will definitely have to take on a road Warrior mentality, but the great fans of the team are sure to follow wherever it leads them.

COACH DZIAGWA - BIO

DON DZIAGWA begins his 21st year as the head coach at Tampa Catholic and his tenth as the assistant Athletic Director.  His overall record at TC is 338-261, which includes 8 district championships and 4 trips to the State Final Four, including the school’s only state basketball championship in 1995. He currently has 399 career wins overall. Dziagwa’s TC teams have advanced past the district tournament into regional play 15 out of the 20 seasons that he has been at the helm.

Dziagwa is a 1977 graduate of Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia.  Upon graduation he returned to his high school alma mater Parkersburg Catholic, also nicknamed the Crusaders, to teach and coach.  After two years there he moved to Wheeling, WV to join Skip Prosser, former head coach at Wake Forest University, at Central Catholic H.S.  While an assistant, Central advanced to the West Virginia Final Four and Dziagwa’s JV and sophomore teams had a combined 28-1 record.  After two years as the head coach at St. Mary’s H.S., Dziagwa moved to Florida and became an assistant at Tampa Catholic.  The head coach at the time was Gordon Gibbons, now the head coach at Clayton State College in Georgia.  Dziagwa was an assistant at TC for 3 seasons, one of which TC advanced to the State Final Four, before he took the head coaching job at Leto H.S.  Dziagwa spent 5 seasons at Leto before returning to TC as the head coach.

Dziagwa has been named the All-Suncoast Coach of the Year twice.  He has been named County Coach of the Year three times, and coached the South team to a 106-105 victory over the North in the 1996 Florida all-star game.  His teams have won the Hillsborough County Team of the Year Award twice.  TC has played games in Europe, New York, California, Atlanta, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Las Vegas.  He has also traveled with all-star teams to the Soviet Union, Ireland, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Slovenia, and the Netherlands    Dziagwa runs a very successful summer basketball camp at TC that annually attracts over 300 players each year.  He has served twice on the state basketball coaches’ advisory board.

Dziagwa is very active coaching AAU basketball.  He has coached teams that have advanced to 5 AAU National Championship tournaments.  When he first moved to Florida he was an assistant for 2 years with Team Florida helping them win a national championship in 1984.

Coach Dziagwa is married to the former Mary Lamoureux, daughter of former Tampa Catholic teacher,  Nancy Lamoureux.  Mary is a Tampa Catholic graduate. They are the proud parents of four, Matt 22, a junior at St. Pete College,  Annie 21, a junior at Flagler College, both TC graduates, Grace 17, a senior at TC, and Thomas  13, an 8^th grader at Villa Madonna where his mother is a 2^nd grade teacher.