By Kyle Coppola
Road to FHSAA Flag Football State Championship Runs Through Wildwood
WILDWOOD, Fla. — The road to the FHSAA Class 1A Flag Football State Championship officially runs through Wildwood.
The undefeated Wildwood Middle High School girls flag football team (9-0) claimed the District Championship in dominant fashion, shutting out rival The Villages 48-0. With a blistering offense and suffocating defense, the Lady Wildcats enter the state tournament as the No. 1 overall seed and a team no one wants to face.
Freshman quarterback Zoey Brown has been sensational, throwing for 990 yards — just 10 shy of the 1,000-yard mark. Brown has completed 98 of her 169 pass attempts and is responsible for 28 total touchdowns, including 22 through the air and 6 on the ground.
But Brown isn’t doing it alone.
(Wildwood clinched the district championship last week with a 48-0 win against The Villages. Photo Credit – Wildwood Middle High School.)
Senior wide receiver Trinidy Harris has emerged as a go-to target, hauling in 261 yards and five touchdowns, while junior Adajah Corbin has added 255 receiving yards and six scores of her own.
Defensively, Wildwood is nothing short of elite.
Senior pass rusher Ra’nyla Jackson has terrorized opposing quarterbacks, racking up 13 sacks on the year. The defense has collectively tallied 18 interceptions, averaging more than two per game. Brown leads the way here, too, with eight picks and 70 return yards, while fellow freshman Ja’niya Corbin is close behind with seven interceptions.
The team has outscored opponents by a staggering margin of 313-62, a testament to its dominance on both sides of the ball. They have had a short season due to the basketball team winning the FHSAA Class Rural State Championship this season. Most of the girls who were part of that team were on the basketball team. Despite that, the team transitioned flawlessly from the basketball court to the football field. Incredibly all the girls on this team who were part of the basketball team still have not lost a game this year. They remain 34-0 combined between the two sports. Absolutely incredible and a shoutout to coach Vincent Brown Sr. for what he has done for women’s sports in the area.
With the top seed secured, Wildwood will host Tarpon Springs in the first round of the state tournament on April 23 at 7 p.m. The game will take place at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Park, which has served as the Wildcats’ home field this season. It will also mark the final postseason run on natural grass for the program, as Wildwood prepares to transition to a new artificial turf field currently being installed at the school and the reason for the games not being played on the high school campus.
As the state tournament kicks off, one thing is clear: if you want to win the title, you’ll have to go through Wildwood.
Kyle Coppola was born in Newton, Massachusetts and received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Communications from Curry College in 2016. After traveling to Florida on a family vacation, he decided he could not get enough of the warm weather and made the move from snowy Massachusetts to central Florida 8 years ago.
For the last decade Kyle has gained valuable experience in social media content creation, marketing and sales, writing, video production, sports announcing and even broadcasting for local radio stations, such as FM 102.9 in The Villages and FM 91.5 in Massachusetts. Every year he volunteers at The Villages Charter High School as a play-by-play sports announcer for the football games as well as a public address announcer for the basketball games, including the annual Battle at The Villages Tournament.
Outside the office Kyle is a husband and father to two beautiful girls along with their cat. In his spare time he likes to spend time with his family, travel, play golf and swim. He is also a huge sports junkie and even bigger motorsports fan and loves to attend racing events when he can.
