By Rick Pedone
Sports Editor

Celebration and Poinciana, two football teams that traditionally struggle, meet Friday at 7 p.m. at Eagle field seeking their first wins for 2012.

Celebration, 0-1, lost at Lake Placid, 26-12, last week in Coach Ed Meierkort’s first game on the Storm sideline.

Poinciana, 0-1, was blitzed at Gateway, 47-0, in its opener last week.

The Eagles won last season, when the Storm was winless.

Meierkort said his team regrouped after falling behind 13-0 early at Lake Placid and had an opportunity to take the lead in the third quarter when it was on the Green Dragon 2.

There, the game turned when the Storm fumbled and Lake Placid marched 99 yards to go up, 20-12.

“It’s typical when a team historically struggles for it to find a way to lose. Teams with a history of success will find a way to win,” Meierkort said. “I thought our effort was fantastic, but our execution was bad.”

Receiver Johnny Victor caught a 31-yard TD pass from quarterback Will Santry for one score and senior Tevin Carrington ran for another.

Celebration had two TDs called back because of penalties.

Meierkort said inexperience played a role in the loss.

“We’ve got eight kids on the team who have been out about 10 days,” he said. “We did some good things. We got four or five turnovers, I thought we played tenacious defense. I’ll give Lake Placid’s coaching staff credit, they had a little zone thing going up the middle with the fullback and they stuck with it.”

Poinciana was never close at Gateway last week, falling behind 35-0 at the half.

Coach Corey Fleming said his team continues to struggle with fundamentals and mistakes.

“We did a better job of lining up, but we’re making fundamental mistakes and too many turnovers,” he said.

Josh Lopez had seven receptions for the Eagles. “Josh played a good game, we’ll need more like that from him and some other guys for us to get better,” Fleming said. “We’ve got to work on pushing ourselves. I did like that the guys were playing hard in the fourth quarter. We blocked a couple of PATs.”

Meierkort said Poinciana is a dangerous foe.

“They’ve got some pretty athletic kids. I haven’t seen enough of the teams around here to say for certain what their level is. We just have to get better ourselves and be ready to play,” he said.