Best of sports 2015

Winter Park Commission crowns champion 'Cats: May 14, 2015

By the middle of May, Winter Park High School had so many state and national champions for sports that they had to pack them into one ceremony at Winter Park City Hall. The girls cross country team had won the 2014 state championship, led by Freshman Rafaella Gibbons. The track, crew and cheerleading teams took on all comers. And their Special Olympics unified basketball team won state. Just a few months later, one of those teams had done it again. Find out about all those championships from last school year at bit.ly/WinterParkchamps and read about the cross country team’s newest championship at bit.ly/WPCCchamps

Winter Park volleyball player gets recruited in first round: May 14, 2015

No boys high school volleyball player from Florida had ever been recruited to the top college volleyball team in the nation until Baron Hahn. On May 9, Loyola University took the national title. The same week, they asked Hahn, a Winter Park High School front-line phenom, to play for them. Now the former AAU Junior National Champion is a middle blocker for the Ramblers. Read about his story at http://bit.ly/BaronHahn

Orangewood wins state soccer title: Feb. 26, 2015

Orangewood Christian School’s boys soccer team’s 2014-15 state championship looked inevitable in retrospect. They had shut out the last eight teams they played en route to the state championship game in Lakeland on Feb. 12. They had outscored all of their opponents that season by a combined 119-11. They hadn’t lost a game since the second week of the season, and it was their only loss. Then they destroyed Santa Fe Catholic in one of the most lopsided state series wins of 2015. Read more about it at bit.ly/Orangewoodchampionship

Eagles clinch, Knights lose iconic coach: Oct. 29, 2015

Just as the Edgewater Eagles were punching their ticket for the postseason, where they would push as far as the regional quarterfinals, the UCF Knights were losing an iconic coach. George O’Leary had built the Knights from a winless team in the middle of the worst losing streak in NCAA football, and made them BCS Bowl champions. Then, in the middle of their second worst season of all time, O’Leary called it quits. But the Knights found some optimism at the end of that dark season with the hiring of Oregon Offensive Coordinator Scott Frost. Read about the Eagles and O’Leary at http://bit.ly/Edgewatersoars and Scott Frost and UCF’s future at http://bit.ly/CoachFrost