State Championship Assembly

Jose E. Roca | School Principal
(The following remarks were made to the entire student body during a special assembly on November 13 honoring the State Championships won by Cross Country and individual titles in Swimming.) 
Good Morning, we gather together this morning to celebrate the State Championship of our Cross Country team and the individual Swimming State Championship for Aitor Fungairino.
 
Sometimes we have a dynasty under our own noses and we do not realize it.  The cross country program has a rich history of forming young men and winning races.  Our team has won the district championship 36 times, the regional 2 times, and has finished in the top 5 at the state level 36 times. This past Saturday (November 11) our Cross country team won their 9th state championship in school history moving us to the second most state championships in the history of the FHSAA. This winning tradition has been under the leadership of only two coaches at Belen.  Our first cross country coach and current athletic director Carlos Barquin and our current cross country coach with 8 state championships Frankie Ruiz.
 
The team was represented by ten runners at the state level, seven of the ten run and the top 5 score for the team.  I will call out the top ten runners first. 
10) Javier Vento
9) Giancarlo Benitez
8) Gabriel Nunes
7) Matthew Bryan 37th place
6) Diego Gomez 26th place
5) Cesar Aguzzi 21st place
4) Sebastian Roa 18th place
3) Adam Magoulas 17th place
2) Lucas de la Hoz 16th place
1) Joshua Collins 2nd place with a time of 15:39
 
Let’s also call up the rest of the cross country team and their coaches. 
 
I would like for all of us to once more congratulate our 2017 State Champion Cross Country team with a strong round of applause.
 
This past weekend our Swimming and Diving Team participated in the State Championship.  The team has also been very successful over the years with 7 state championships and finishing in the top 5 almost every year. Today we want to recognize Aitor Fungairino who won the individual state championship in the 200 and 500 freestyle for the second year in a row.  His time in the 200 freestyle of 1:34.89 is a school record and is .20 of a second off the state record held by Olympic Gold medalist Caeleb Dressel. Aitor please come up on stage.  As a whole, the team came in 5th place at the state level led by Aitor’s individual performance and the 200 yard Freestyle relay team that finished in 3rd place. 
 
Can I have the swim team please come up and join Aitor on stage?  These young men sacrifice a lot with morning and afternoon practices to be able to perform at the highest level.
 
Let’s give our swim team another round of applause.
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BELEN JESUIT PREPARATORY SCHOOL
500 SW 127th Avenue, Miami, FL 33184
phone: 305.223.8600 | fax: 305.227.2565 | email: webmaster@belenjesuit.org
Belen Jesuit Preparatory School was founded in 1854 in Havana, Cuba by Queen Isabel II of Spain.  The task of educating students was assigned to the priests and brothers of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits), whose teaching tradition is synonymous with academic excellence and spiritual discipline.  In 1961, the new political regime of Cuba confiscated the School property and expelled the Jesuit faculty.  The School was re-established in Miami the same year, and over the next decade, continued to grow.  Today, Belen Jesuit sits on a 30-acre site in western Dade County, only minutes away from downtown Miami.