Gierke Name A Key Part Of Central Florida H.S. Football

And now there are three,
Would you believe three guys named Gierke will be head football coaches in Central Florida for this upcoming football season.
Veteran Bill Gierke, 57, who retired from Orange County Public Schools (Evans, Dr. Phillips, Edgewater) at the end of last season after 35 years of coaching, was named this month the new coach at Maitland Orangewood Christian, a Class 3A private school seeking to enhance its athletic fortunes.

Veteran Chip Gierke, 59, who was head coach at Apopka and Dr. Phillips for two decades and spent the last decade as defensive coordinator for brother Bill at Edgewater, accepted the challenge of restoring Evans to football prominence.
And they join Nathan Gierke, Bill’s son, who is the only head football coach Oviedo Hagerty has evef had, and last fall led his team to its most successful season in school history, which resulted in a playoff berth.

Bill Gierke posted a 257-74-1 career record. Most Central Florida football watchers remember the 1 tie, where Evans and Miami Southridge shared the big school state championship and led to a rule change which called for a tie-breaker to determine the champion.
Orangewood and the Gierke family have a little bit of coaching history. When Chip was coaching football at Apopka, he spent several springs helping coach Orangewood’s baseball team when the program was in its formative years.
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I guess you could say the high school track season is off to a fast start. Real fast.
Orlando Boone junior Marvin Bracy, also a football wide receiver, ran the fastest time in the nation for the 55-meter indoor sprint, clocking 6.24 seconds at the Jimmy Carnes Invitational run at the University of Florida’s O’Connell Center facility.
It was the first time Bracy ever participated in indoor competition. He qualified for the final in 6.37 and that was his first-ever indoor race. He has been invited to a major indoor competition in Seattle later this month.

Meanwhile, Florida’s two fastest girl sprinters, both international caliber competitors, signed college grants-in-aid last week.
Lake Wales’ Octavia Freeman, who already has won seven state championship events and has run some of the nation’s fastest 100 and 200 meter times, signed with UCF. Kissimmee Osceola’s Tynia Gaither, who was last year’s Class 4A 100 and 200 meter champion and ran last summer internationally for The Bahamas junior national team, signed with the University of Georgia where her Bahamian coach recently joined the staff.
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Always the uber-competitor, Orlando’s Brittany Viola battled back from two ankle surgeries over the past two years and limited practice opportunities to win her first national diving title on platform last week.
Viola, daughter of 1988 Cy Young Award winner and Bright House Sports Network baseball analyst Frank Viola, won her title at the USA Diving Winter Nationals held at Iowa City, Iowa.

The Lake Highland Prep and University of Miami diver (NCAA champion) has only been training for a little more than a month. The victory qualifies her for the USA Diving International Grand Prix and places her in the selection pool for the team that ultimately will represent the United States at the 2011 World Championships scheduled for Shanghai, China.