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St. Cloud junior Mikey Ziss, a two-time defending state champion, will be favored to add two more titles to his resume in the 119-pound weight class at Friday’s FHSAA Class 3A state weightlifting championships in Lakeland. SUBMITTED PHOTO
When the FHSAA Class 3A state weightlifting championships begin in Lakeland Friday, St. Cloud’s Mikey Ziss will be highly favored to win gold medals in both the Olympic and Traditional disciplines at the 119-pound weight class.
The junior dynamo enters the meet as the defending state champion in both and is coming off a dominating wins at the Region 3A-3 championships. In helping the Bulldogs to a regional team championship in the Traditional (bench press plus clean-and-jerk), Ziss won his weight class with a total of 475 pounds, 140 pounds more than second place.
Ziss was equally dominant in the Olympic discipline (clean-and-jerk/snatch), where his 455 pound total was 185 pounds better than second place. He was so dominating that his totals would have each of the next two heavier weight classes.
Ziss will be joined at state by double regional winners Louis and Anthony Rodriguez of Harmony. The brothers won both the Olympic and Traditional at the 219 and 238-pound weight classes respectively.
Other regional champions included Luke Morton-Carlson (Celebration) at 154 pounds and Poinciana’s Noah Otero (169) and St. Cloud’s Conner Howes (Unlimited) in the traditional discipline.
Those six individual champions will be joined at-large qualifiers from St. Cloud: Politano (119, Olympic), Kevin Arriaga (139, Olympic), Jonathan Morales (154, Olympic and traditional), Raiden Hsu (183, Olympic), Jayden Perez (183, Traditional) and Jonathan Siri (199, Olympic). Howes, the traditional regional champion, also earned an at-large bid in the Olympic.
Poinciana’s Otero also qualified in the Olympic as an at-large participant. He will be joined in that classification by teammates Angelo Rodriguez (169) and Camron Brown (199), who qualified as at-large participants. Harmony will send Santos Torres and Dominic Trombetta to the 129-pound finals on the Olympic side.
St. Cloud won the Region 3 traditional team title with 31 points, followed by Park Vista (27) and Harmony (27). Olympic Heights (42) won the Olympic team championship; followed by Harmony (36) and St. Cloud (33).
“We simply did not have enough depth to win the Olympic regional title and one critical bomb out cost us second place,” St. Cloud coach Cory Aun said. “Still I was pleased that we won the Traditional team title and managed to advance nine lifters overall to the state meet.”
In the Class 2A state championship meet, Region 3 champion Kevin Hill from Liberty will be among the favorites in the Olympic as he won 169-pound class with a 575-pound total – best among the 20 state qualifiers. Joshua Fabian, also from Liberty, won the Traditional at 238 and also qualified for the Olympic in the same weight class.
