Today is the day of the tournament. You have five schools to compete against to reach the top. It’s anyone’s game, and all it takes to win is to have the most desire to win it. In order to win physically, first, you must win mentally.

Deltona Duels is a wrestling tournament held at Deltona High School that had six teams come out for a dual tournament – which means that two teams go against each other and the more wins the wrestler gets, the more team points they receive. Oviedo, Deltona, Lyman, University Orange City, Seabreeze, and Creekside High School all participated.

Oviedo was first challenged with one of the tougher teams at this tournament, Creekside. Last year, Creekside beat them by 70+ points, but this year Oviedo was a new team. At first they were struggling with the score being 24-3 to Creekside, but they came back and ended up winning the dual 34-30.

“This was not the ideal start for our team, but they gave it all they got and I couldn’t be more proud,” Coach Zachary Waters said.

This made the team incredibly excited and raised their hopes for their next dual against Deltona. They won the duel 43-30, which made Oviedo 2-0 in the tournament.

“At this point, we were all really happy and felt that we could win the whole tournament,” wrestler John Miceli said.

After their win against Deltona, they had to go against Lyman. By now, Oviedo had the motivation to win it all with only three more duals to go. They dominated Lyman with a score of 72-9.

Now the team was on a roll with three wins and no losses. Their next team was Orange City, who they also beat 66-13. This allowed the team to possibly secure the victory if they could win one more duel.

With the team being very eager to win, they went against Seabreeze for their final duel. They went undefeated, winning 82-0. With this final victory, they went 5-0 and earned first place in Deltona duels.

At this tournament, the team had two wrestlers who went 5-0 on the day – including junior Clayton Mitchell.

“If you told me last year that we would win this tournament, I wouldn’t believe you,” Mitchell said. “I think because of that, our team has come a long way.”