For­mer bmo­bile and Joe Pub­lic strik­er Ker­ry Bap­tiste has put pen to pa­per on deal with North Amer­i­can Soc­cer League Sec­ond Di­vi­sion club, FC Tam­pa Bay. The deal for the out-of-con­tract Bap­tiste will be com­plet­ed when the in­ter­na­tion­al trans­fer win­dow opens next Fri­day pend­ing league ap­proval. The 29-year-old Bap­tiste has been with­out a club since part­ing ways with Joe Pub­lic at the start of the year and once his deal is com­plet­ed he will be re­unit­ed with his for­mer coach at Jabloteh, cur­rent FC Tam­pa Bay coach, Eng­lish­man Ricky Hill. "Ker­ry is a proven in­ter­na­tion­al play­er who can play a va­ri­ety of po­si­tions from mid­field to for­ward," said Hill.

"He pos­sess­es a high lev­el of foot­ball knowl­edge and is a very tech­ni­cal play­er." Dur­ing his four sea­sons at Joe Pub­lic Bap­tiste, scored more than 100 goals, in­clud­ing a record 52 in the 2009 cam­paign to lead the club to an un­prece­dent­ed five ti­tles lo­cal­ly. He was named T&T Pro­fes­sion­al Foot­ball League Play­er of the Year in 2009 and was part of the 2008-09 and 2010-11 teams that par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Con­ca­caf Cham­pi­ons League. Bap­tiste al­so played for the the na­tion­al Un­der-20 and Un­der-23 Olympic squads.