By Ken Jackson
Sports Writer

New Celebration head football coach Ben Aarestad, a defensive coordinator at previous stops, is ingrained in the play on that side of the ball. Based on his roots, he’s going to stress what his team does when it doesn’t have the ball.

Storm players have only been around him a couple of months, but the result of Friday’s spring game at Poinciana offered a loud-and-clear message:

They get it.

Celebration forced six Eagle turnovers — five interceptions and a fumble. Four of them eventually turned into Storm touchdowns. Free safety Tyler Osorio had two of them, and he returned the second for a touchdown, the final tally in a 37-6 win.

Cameron Ward, Andrew Braun and John Raemisch had the other pickoffs. Ward, Teagan Harris and Zack Brown all had sacks.

“That’s what we preach, and it shows that we’re teaching the right things,” Aarestad said. “It’s good to finally beat on someone else and see where you stack up, so we know what we still have to work on.”

Not-so-new faces appeared at the skill positions for Celebration, but they were new to the starting lineup. Miguel Torres-Bruno, who’s seen action at quarterback over two seasons, got the start. Osorio, a former fullback who was hurt much of the 2009 season, appeared at tailback with new starter Brandon Archambeau (13 carries, 65 yards) and scored on a 26-yard touchdown run and a 21-yard catch to go with his defensive score. Archambeau added a 14-yard touchdown run.

“Tyler ran hard all night, and Brandon always runs his butt off,” Aarestad said. “Miguel made some good decisions and some bad ones.”

Torres-Bruno scored on runs of 7 and 1 yard, the first one giving Celebration a 7-0 lead on the first play of the second quarter. John Birchall added the PAT.

Both offensive lines needed time to come together early on. Poinciana trailed 13-0 midway through the second quarter. The Eagles had only 10 yards of offense before assembling a six-play, 58-yard drive that ended with a Ronnie Hill 8-yard TD run to make it a 13-6 score that held until halftime.

PHS Coach Michael Timpson said he told his kids to focus on the effort and not the score of Friday’s game,

“I said not to put too much stock in the score of a spring game because it will eat at you and ruin your offseason program,” he said.  “I liked how we started the second half tough, and that the kids didn’t give up. They’ll watch this on film and see that we have to build it up from here.”

Last Thursday, Gateway traveled to Lake Nona and lost to the Lions, 35-7, in its spring game. Lake Nona’s highly-touted quarterback Kevin Sousa threw for four interceptions, but Panthers’ Coach Marlin Roberts said that he’s the best quarterback Gateway will see all year.

“Sousa beat us by himself but we attacked him, and Bryan Rosa’s facemask was glued to him much of the night,” he said. “We had freshmen in the secondary, so nothing happened that I

didn’t expect.”

Zack Smith, one of four rising sophomores in the GHS backfield (with Ian Stevens, Aaron Roman and Anderson Duree), scored on a 20-yard run.

“We had four freshmen in the backfield who showed they are going to be some nice football players,” Roberts said.