![\"Columbus](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/IMG_5479.png\" "\\"Columbus")
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Columbus faculty, alumni and supporters gather at Bayshore Bar & Grill as they prepare to watch Cameron Boozer be selected in the 2026 NBA Draft.<\/p>\n
Tyler Carmona<\/p>\n
Miami Herald<\/p>\n
Kevin Testa watched Cameron Boozer win so often at Miami Columbus High School that the championship photos on his phone now double as a timeline of his own sons growing up.<\/p>\n
For Testa and many other Explorer alumni, the Boozers\u2019 four-year run became something families planned around.<\/p>\n
He brought his sons, then 10 and 12 years old, to Columbus\u2019 first boys basketball state championship in 2022, then kept following the team as Cameron and Cayden Boozer won state titles in each of their four seasons, with the run becoming part of his sons\u2019 childhood.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy sons literally got to grow up watching the Boozers win championships,\u201d Testa said. \u201cThose road trips were so much fun. It was a family event.\u201d<\/p>\n
That same family atmosphere followed Boozer to draft night, when a crowd of Columbus faculty, alumni and friends gathered at Bayshore Bar & Grill to watch him be selected No. 3 overall by the Memphis Grizzlies in the 2026 NBA Draft.<\/p>\n
To Maria Romero, Boozer\u2019s pre-calculus college dual enrollment professor at Columbus, the discipline that made him one of the country\u2019s best basketball players showed up just as clearly in the classroom.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has the same dedication on the court that he has in his academics,\u201d Romero said.<\/p>\n
By the time his tenure at Columbus was over, Boozer boasted a 4.88 weighted GPA before heading off to Duke.<\/p>\n
With a son who could have changed the outlook of almost any high school basketball program in the country, Cameron\u2019s mother, CeCe Boozer, said the decision came down to more than basketball.<\/p>\n
When the family chose Columbus, it was the school\u2019s education and culture that stood out most.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe quality of education speaks for itself in the amount of Fortune 500 company owners that they\u2019ve produced,\u201d Boozer said. \u201cYou see the Columbus brotherhood, what all these young men are doing as they enter adulthood is outstanding.\u201d<\/p>\n
During the 2025-26 college basketball season, Boozer was named the Naismith National Player of the Year after averaging 22.5 points, 10.2 rebounds, 4.1 assists and 1.4 steals per game for Duke.<\/p>\n
Throughout his time at Columbus, Boozer built one of the most decorated high school careers in South Florida history. He helped lead the Explorers to a 109-13 record, four consecutive Class 7A state championships and the 2025 Chipotle Nationals title, while earning honors as a two-time Florida Mr. Basketball, two-time Gatorade National Player of the Year and McDonald\u2019s All-American.<\/p>\n
Nick Ramos, Columbus\u2019 vice president of advancement, said the rest of the country is only now getting introduced to what the school saw for four years.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe world is going to witness what we got to see for four years,\u201d Ramos said. \u201cHe\u2019s an incredible human being that just happens to be a generational basketball talent.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Columbus faculty, alumni and supporters gather at Bayshore Bar & Grill as they prepare to watch Cameron Boozer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":317706,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[123,125,124],"class_list":["post-317705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/317706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}