The faces on the court may have changed but the results didn’t.
Celebration swept both the boys and girls Orange Belt Conference tennis championships Monday on their home court.
The Storm claimed 13 of the 14 lines. The boys won all five singles and both doubles competitions to finish with a perfect score of 21. Four of Gateway’s five single players and both doubles teams reached the final and the Panthers (13) finished second ahead of Poinciana (6).
The Lady Storm (19) was almost as dominant, 10 clear of Gateway (9). St. Cloud, who won the No. 2 doubles to prevent a CHS girls’ clean sweep, and Tohopekaliga tied for third (7).
The single elimination bracket tournament started on Saturday with quarterfinals and semifinals at the Oak Street courts, with the finals moving to the Storm Campus on Monday.
The Storm boys won the tournament for the 8th straight year and 15th time overall, while Celebration girls won their fifth straight OBC crown and 17th overall.
Celebration’s top-seeded Bekzod Jalilov defeated Gateway’s Ryan Vonk, 8-2, in the No. 1 and then teamed with No. 2 singles champion Gabriel Santos to defeat Gateway, 8-0, in the No. 1 doubles match.
Nos. 3-5 Spencer Steery, Daniel Henriquez and Samuel Rodriguez also took singles championships as did the Storm’s No. 2 doubles team in completing the sweep. Overall, the Storm boys only dropped 13 games in Monday’s final.
Celebration girls No. 1 Diana Perez-Nunez lost just one game in defeating Osceola’s Biana Perez (8-1) in the top singles final. After teammate Ekram Aouita defeated Gateway’s Leah Nguyen in the No. 2 singles, she teamed with Perez-Nunez to win No. 1 doubles.
The biggest surprise came in the No. 3 girls, where seventhseeded Marita Hoffman of St. Cloud pulled a couple of upsets to reach the final before falling to Celebration’s Sofia Morillo, 8-0.
Two weeks remain in the regular season before the start of the district playoffs on April 13.
Bulldogs dominate the platform—again
St. Cloud High weightlifters won 15 of a possible 20 individual titles and had 26 of 27 athletes score team points, as the Bulldogs won their fifth consecutive Orange Belt Conference championship.
Cory Aun’s team dominated the competition, posting seven champions in the Olympic competition (clean and jerk plus snatch) and eight Traditional champions (clean and bench press). They outdistanced second place Harmony in the Olympic (100 to 51) and the Traditional (98-41) to compile 198 total team points. Harmony (51-41-92) finished second followed by Poinciana (66), Celebration (35), Liberty (20), Osceola (19), Tohopekaliga (4) and Gateway (3).
“Our guys had an outstanding meet overall,” Aun Burnash won Traditional titles for the Bulldogs.
Perez broke his own school record in the snatch with a 250-pound lift. Dionisi and Burnash both had to come from behind on their final bench presses—hitting 260 and 305 pounds respectively—to secure Traditional titles.
Celebration’s Matt Murwasky had a dominating performance in the 199-pound class. The Storm athlete put together successful lifts of 255 (Cleanand- Jerk) and 300 (Bench) to win the Traditional by 35 pounds. He came back with a 185-lb. effort in the snatch to win the Olympic (185-255-440) by 15 pounds over his closest competitor. Murwasky joined Lopez, Green, Torres, Perez, and Cuello-Vega as the only dual gold medalists on the evening.
Murwalsky’s teammate George Taruru (219-Traditional) and Harmony’s Mehki Ealy (Unlimited-Olympic) and Bryce Berry (169-Olympic) won the other individual championships.
The victory—St. Cloud’s 17th boys title overall—completed a sweep for the Bulldogs. Last fall, the Lady Bulldogs won their 15th consecutive OBC title and 19th overall.
OBC’s concluded the regular season. Districts will be contested next week; with regionals (Apr. 22-25) and the FHSAA State Championships (May 6-8) to follow.
“Winning the conference title was awesome, but from this point forward we will concentrate on getting as many lifters as possible through districts and regionals,” Aun added. “We have a couple of athletes right now that are ranked in the top three in the state.”
Check AroundOsceola.com for updates and results in the OBC baseball (this week) and softball (next) tournaments
