By Ken Jackson
Sports Writer

What could be better for the Celebration football team than a come-from-behind, 25-20 victory on the road?

Another victory, of course, considering they haven’t come in bunches for the Storm in the past.

Coach Ben Aarestad’s team hopes to follow the victory at Lake Placid (0-2) last week with an equally positive outing Friday in the Storm’s home opener against Palm Bay Heritage. Kickoff is at 7 p.m.

A win would put Celebration (1-1) over .500 for the first time since the Storm beat Poinciana 14-12 on Sept. 29, 2006, to go to 3-2. That’s also the last time the program registered back-to-back wins.

“It was a good victory after not playing well for the first six minutes,” Aarestad said.

The Storm ended its first drive with a fumble and trailed 14-0 after one period before going on a tear for the next 18 minutes.

Celebration’s first score was set up by a Brandon Archambeau interception. On the next play, Tyler Osorio took a short Miguel Torres-Bruno pass and turned it into a long touchdown play of 84 yards.

Down 14-7, it was Jemiel Lowery’s turn to make a little magic on the last play of the first half. With all of Torres-Bruno’s deep routes covered, he checked down to Lowery, who then weaved 45 yards to the end zone. The PAT was missed, but Aarestad said making it a 14-13 game going into halftime was huge.

“There’s a big difference going in down one than down seven,” he said. “Miguel did a great job just taking what was there. Jemiel broke a tackle and did the rest.”

The Storm took a 19-14 lead when Osorio ran it in from 15 yards out. He then intercepted Dragons quarterback Kirk Veley on the next drive, and Lowery later turned it into points with a 15-yard TD run that upped the lead to 25-14 midway through the third quarter.

Lake Placid closed to 25-20 and got the ball back, but Archambeau intercepted Veley again to end the comeback.

Aarestad said he was curious to see how his players would respond to a bit of adversity.

“It was great to see them end the game on their terms,” he said. “Brandon made a great play on that ball.”

The Storm tallied 340 offensive yards, with Osorio, Lowery and Archambeau combining for 290 of it.

Heritage enters Friday’s game on the same kind of high after getting the program’s first win, 27-6, at Poinciana.