By Rick Pedone
Sports Editor

Almost its entire wrestling roster advanced to Friday’s regional meet as the Osceola Kowboys dominated the 3A District 5 tournament at the OHS gym.

The Kowboys (248.5) out-distanced second-place Lakeland (136) and four other teams, including Gateway, in defending its district championship. Thirteen Kowboys, a school record, advanced.

The 3A-2 regional begins Friday at noon at the OHS gym and continues through the championship round Saturday at 6 p.m. The admission fee is $6 per session. There is one session Friday and two Saturday. The semifinal round will begin at approximately 9:30 a.m. Saturday.

Wrestlers from St. Cloud, Liberty, Celebration and Harmony competed at the 2A-5 tournament at St. Cloud Saturday, where defending state champion Oviedo won. The top four wrestlers from each weight class advanced to Friday’s 2A-2 regional at South Florida Community College Friday and Saturday.

Poinciana High qualifiers at the A-7 district tournament advanced to the A-2 regional at Lakeland Tenoroc Friday.

A record total of 67 Osceola County wrestlers advanced.

Nine OHS wrestlers won district championships and 12 reached the finals last week.

The district champs are E.J. Jimenez (119), Tim Locksmith (125), Alex Rivera (130), Wade Ridings (135), Paul Zupofska (140), Pete Baldwin (145), Chris Pagan (171), Jhalen Flanders (189) and Trevor Darnell (285).

Runners-up include Cody Dana (112), Kenny Martin (152) and Spencer Lacey (160). Ben Cruz (215) was third.

“Everybody wrestled well. It was one of those things that when you get on a roll, everyone feeds off of it,” Kowboys Coach Jim Bird, who took the team to the 2009 state championship, said.

Defending state champion Brandon leads the way into the regional tournament. The Eagles won 14 district championships last week and are the favorites to win the regional and state titles.

“That’s nothing new. Brandon is going to do what it always does,” Bird said. “By winning nine championships last week, we’ve set ourselves up pretty well. If we wrestle the way we wrestled last week, we’ll be happy with our results.”

Gateway Coach Jon Smorin saw 12 wrestlers advance to the regional tournament, led by district champion Alex Velez (112), who is 42-5.

Bryan Rosa (125) was a runner-up, while Gateway’s Kris Mora (119), Carlos Arango (103), Christian Vazquez (152), Austin Seward (130) and Giovanni Sanchez (135) qualified in third place.

Fourth were Wyatt Seward (140), Ben Colon (215), Josh Pizarro (171), Victor Rodriguez (160) and Berlin Henri (285).

Celebration (169.5) and Liberty tied for second place behind Oviedo (255) at the 2A-5 tournament at St. Cloud. Harmony (147.5) was fourth and host St. Cloud (75) was fifth.

Celebration, like Osceola, advanced a school-record 13 wrestlers to the regional tournament led by 119-pound champion Josh Douglas.

Cameron Ward (189), Brandon Harris (215) and Alvaro Norena (heavyweight) all reached the finals, placing second.

Third for Celebration were Hector Almedina (130), J.J. Francis (145), Justin Temple (160) and Curtis Temple (171). Qualifying in fourth place were Gio Mercado (112), Edwin Baez (125), Skylar Lerner (135), Everett Suarez (140) and Tyler Phelan (152).

“It was a great team effort,” Storm Coach Vic Lorenzano said.

Liberty sent a school-record 10 wrestlers to the regional tournament, led by district champs Felix Betancourt (130), Josh Garcia (152) and Aric Fernandez (189).

The Chargers had three runners-up in Corey Grey (125), J.J. Elisis (160) and Freddy Ruiz (171), while three more Chargers placed third: Robert Torres (103), Manny Figueroa (135) and Joel Martinez (215). Heavyweight Vlad Pena finished fourth.

“We wrestled tough and won the matches we needed to win,” Coach Chris Kelly said. “Regionals will be the most grueling challenge of the year. Our focus is getting as many guys as we can through to state and win some medals once we get there.”

Harmony boasted four district champions at the 2A-5 tournament including Chris Grillo (145) who won for the fourth time. Joining him with gold medals are Ariel Dominguez (130), Matt Vaughan (135) and Joey Finneran (140).

Grillo is seeking his third state appearance.

Coach Chris Todd said nine of his wrestlers advanced.

Harmony’s Justin Owens (112) was third and Alex Githens (160), Rey Almonte (171), Alex Calderon (189) and Andrew Davis (215) were fourth.

“Nine overall isn’t bad, but I think we could have done a better job of wining some of our placing matches in the consolations.” Todd said. “That would have helped our kids out more at regionals.”

St. Cloud will send Joe McGinley (2nd, 112), Tyler Miller (4th, 103), Riley Fertic (4th, 119), Ryan Finneran (3rd, 140), Hunter Raddatz (3rd, 152) and Sam Thompson (3rd, 189) to the regional meet.

Poinciana’s Jerry Bazilme (3rd, 130), Donaldo Nava (3rd, 189), Alex Ball (3rd, 215) and Cameron Alcome (4th, 285) all advanced.