Walter L. Sickles High School is a high school in Tampa, Florida

Tampa, Florida

Tampa is a city in the U.S. state of Florida. It serves as the county seat for Hillsborough County. Tampa is located on the west coast of Florida. The population of Tampa in 2010 was 335,709....

. Constructed in 1997, it was named for the former superintendent of Hillsborough County Public Schools

Hillsborough County Public Schools

Hillsborough County Public Schools, Florida is a school district headquartered in Tampa, Florida. It is more commonly referred to as the School District of Hillsborough County, or SDHC....

.

Academics

As of 2008, Sickles High School was not meeting the Adequate Yearly Progress

Adequate Yearly Progress

Adequate Yearly Progress, or AYP, is a measurement defined by the United States federal No Child Left Behind Act that allows the U.S. Department of Education to determine how every public school and school district in the country is performing academically according to results on standardized...

 mandated under the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

According to the Florida Department of Education

Florida Department of Education

The Florida Department of Education is the state education agency of Florida. It governs public education and manages funding and testing for local educational agencies . It is headquartered in the Turlington Building in Tallahassee.The Florida Commissioner of Education manages the day-to-day...

's 2007-08 School Accountability report, Sickles is currently graded as an "A" school.

Athletics

The school sponsors interscholastic teams for young men and women in football

American football

American football is a sport played between two teams of eleven with the objective of scoring points by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone. Known in the United States simply as football, it may also be referred to informally as gridiron football. The ball can be advanced by...

, basketball

Basketball

Basketball is a team sport in which two teams of five players try to score points by throwing or "shooting" a ball through the top of a basketball hoop while following a set of rules...

, cross country

Cross country running

Cross country running is a sport in which people run a race on open-air courses over natural terrain. The course, typically long, may include surfaces of grass and earth, pass through woodlands and open country, and include hills, flat ground and sometimes gravel road...

, golf

Golf

Golf is a precision club and ball sport, in which competing players use many types of clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a golf course using the fewest number of strokes....

, soccer, swimming

Swimming (sport)

Swimming is a sport governed by the Fédération Internationale de Natation .-History: Competitive swimming in Europe began around 1800 BCE, mostly in the form of the freestyle. In 1873 Steve Bowyer introduced the trudgen to Western swimming competitions, after copying the front crawl used by Native...

, tennis

Tennis

Tennis is a sport usually played between two players or between two teams of two players each . Each player uses a racket that is strung to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over a net into the opponent's court. Tennis is an Olympic sport and is played at all levels of society at all...

, and track & field. Young men may also compete in cheerleading

Cheerleading

Cheerleading is a physical activity, sometimes a competitive sport, based on organized routines, usually ranging from one to three minutes, which contain the components of tumbling, dance, jumps, cheers, and stunting to direct spectators of events to cheer on sports teams at games or to participate...

, softball

Softball

Softball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of 10 to 14 players. It is a direct descendant of baseball although there are some key differences: softballs are larger than baseballs, and the pitches are thrown underhand rather than overhand...

, and volleyball

Volleyball

Volleyball is a team sport in which two teams of six players are separated by a net. Each team tries to score points by grounding a ball on the other team's court under organized rules.The complete rules are extensive...

. Young women may also compete in baseball

Baseball

Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...

, flag football

Flag football

Flag football is a version of Canadian football or American football that is popular worldwide. The basic rules of the game are similar to those of the mainstream game , but instead of tackling players to the ground, the defensive team must remove a flag or flag belt from the ball carrier to end...

, football

High school football

High school football, in North America, refers to the game of football as it is played in the United States and Canada. It ranks among the most popular interscholastic sports in both of these nations....

, and wrestling

Scholastic wrestling

Scholastic wrestling, sometimes known in the United States as Folkstyle wrestling, is a style of amateur wrestling practised at the high school and middle school levels in the United States. This wrestling style is essentially Collegiate wrestling with some slight modifications. It is currently...

.

The Sickles boys basketball team competed in a losing effort in the FHSAA 5A state championship against Bartow High School during the 2009-2010 season.

Sickles' football coach Pat O'Brien was selected by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Tampa Bay Buccaneers

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are a professional American football franchise based in Tampa, Florida, U.S. They are currently members of the Southern Division of the National Football Conference in the National Football League – they are the only team in the division not to come from the old NFC West...

 as the high school coach of the year for 2010.

Controversy

In May, 2009 Sickles High School became nationally known because of a controversy when it was alleged that a student's vulva

Vulva

The vulva consists of the external genital organs of the female mammal. This article deals with the vulva of the human being, although the structures are similar for other mammals....

was inadvertently featured in a yearbook photo.

In 1998 Sickles Sophomore Valessa Robinson, was arrested in Texas after the murder of her mother Vicki Robinson.