St. Cloud Weightlifting Dominates OBC, Boys Capture Fifth Straight Title

By: J. Daniel Pearson

The St. Cloud boys weightlifting team joined its girls’ team as Orange Belt Conference 2025-26 champions – easily outdistancing Harmony for their fifth consecutive conference title. Last fall, the Lady Bulldogs won their 15^th straight championship.

It was a dominating performance for St. Cloud, who won 15 of 20 individual titles and saw 26 of its 27 lifters score team points.

“Our guys had an outstanding meet overall,” Bulldogs Head Coach Cory Aun said. “We won two traditional individual titles, I wasn’t expecting to win and we also had two other lifters just miss their final lifts or we would have had two more individual titles. What made the showing more impressive was that the overall competition was pretty intense, as Harmony, Poinciana and Celebration had some great lifters and pretty good team depth.”

Overall, St. Cloud posted seven of the 10 weight classes in the Olympic discipline (clean-and-jerk plus snatch) and eight of the 10 in the Traditional (clean-and-jerk plus bench press). Their 198 total team points topped second place Harmony (92). Poinciana (66) was third and Celebration (35) fourth. Liberty (20), Osceola (19), Tohopekaliga (4) and Gateway (3) rounded out the team scoring.

St. Cloud had five double gold medalists in the championships included Ayden Lopez (119-lb. weight class), Jayden Green (129), Santos Torres (139), Jaden Perez (183) and Mauricio Cuello Vega (238).

Jason Isaraphanich (154) and Tyler Hamilton (219) were the other Olympic champions for St. Cloud; while Demetrius Hollinsworth (154), Gadiel Dionisi (169) and Tristan Burnash (UNL) won Traditional titles for the Bulldogs.

Outstanding individual efforts included Perez, who broke his own school record in the snatch with a 250-lb. lift; as well as Dionisi and Burnash both had to come from behind on their final bench presses – hitting 260 and 305 pounds respectively – to secure Traditional titles.

Harmony and Celebration posted the other individual OBC Champions. Celebration’s Matt Murwasky, competing in the 199-lb. weight class, was also a double winner. The Storm athlete put together successful lifts of 255 (Clean-and-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. Storm teammate George Taruru (219-Traditional), joined Harmony’s Mehki Ealy (Unlimited-Olympic) and Bryce Berry (169-Olympic) as the other individual championships.

OBC’s marked the end of 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.”

2026 ORANGE BELT CONFERENCE WEIGHTLIFTING CHAMPIONSHIPS

FINAL TEAM SCORES (Olympic-Traditional-Total)

St. Cloud 100 98 198

Harmony 51 41 92

Poinciana 36 30 66

Celebration 17 18 35

Liberty 8 12 20

Osceola 5 14 19

Tohopekaliga 0 4 4

Gateway 0 3 3

INDIVIDUAL OBC CHAMPIONS

Wt. Class Olympic Traditional