By Tom Tracy - Florida Catholic
Cardinal Gibbons Chiefs boys' basketball celebrated the school's first-ever state championship recently with a medal ceremony.
Point guard and senior Jose Morales plays with a basketball at the pep rally celebrating the first state championship for Cardinal Gibbons boys' basketball team.
Cheerleaders help celebrate the first state championship for Cardinal Gibbons boys' basketball team.
Athletic director Mike Morrill talks about Cardinal Gibbons Chiefs boys' basketball program during the pep rally celebrating the school's first-ever basketball state championship.
Franciscan Sister Marie Schramko, who has been at the school since it started and now serves as assistant principal of academics, helps the Cardinal Gibbons team celebrate their first state championship in basketball.
Photography: TOM TRACY | FC
FORT LAUDERDALE | Point guard Jose Morales never doubted that the Cardinal Gibbons Chiefs could win the state championship in basketball.
“Yes sir, we knew when we were in pre-season we were number one in the rankings and the number two team was in our districts, so after we beat them we knew that if we played hard we could win the whole thing,” said Morales, a senior who plans to attend Princeton University next fall.
Morales attended public elementary schools but said he relished his Catholic education experience at Cardinal Gibbons. A state championship guarantees that his name, and the names of his teammates, will go down in history at the archdiocesan high school.
Playing in Lakeland in late February, the Chiefs defeated the Tallahassee Rickards 74-58 for the Class 5A Florida state title. The championship was the first in the school’s history and first for Gibbons coach Marty Seidlin.
The Gibbons team had been ranked No. 15 in the nation by USA Today.
Photographer: TOM TRACY | FC
Point guard and senior Jose Morales plays with a basketball at the pep rally celebrating the first state championship for Cardinal Gibbons boys' basketball team.
Photographer: TOM TRACY | FC
Franciscan Sister Marie Schramko, who has been at the school since it started and now serves as assistant principal of academics, helps the Cardinal Gibbons team celebrate their first state championship in basketball.
“This is a first for our school and a big deal. I will really miss everybody at Cardinal Gibbons. I love the family atmosphere and support you get here,” Morales said. “Everybody here has been kind, looking out for each other.”
On March 3, the school officially welcomed its basketball team home and celebrated the victory with a student rally in the gymnasium. The players received their championship gold medals and players and faculty alike talked about their winning season.
In his seventh year at Gibbons, Coach Seidlin said the victory shows that “a great academic and religious school can still be competitive and win a championship if you do everything right.”
He also noted the winning impact of a new junior student and “great offensive player,” Maverick Rowan, who with his family arrived earlier this year in Fort Lauderdale from Pittsburgh, Pa.
For his part, Rowan credited the influence of his father, Ron Rowan, himself a basketball player for St. John’s University in New York and later for the NBA and in overseas leagues.
“We worked hard together, played hard. We are a tough team and we don’t back down from anybody,” Maverick Rowan told The Florida Catholic. “My father has been pushing me on all these years,” he said, adding that he looks forward to another year at Cardinal Gibbons before choosing a college.
This state victory was particularly sweet: Cardinal Gibbons was looking to return to the state tournament for the first time since 2011 when it lost to Leesburg in the 4A title game.
Athletic director Mike Morrill noted that even though Cardinal Gibbons had a lot of great boys’ and girls’ basketball teams over the years, “we were never able to win state. But this was a team that got better game after game,”
“The teamwork they displayed was a joy to see, and teamwork is a difficult dynamic on a team where everybody wants to score,” Morrill said. “But they sacrificed for the team, and that’s what these guys did.”
