By Kyle Coppola
Michelle Towne Named Tavares High School New Softball Coach
Michelle Towne has been announced as the new softball coach at Tavares High School for the upcoming 2027 high school softball season.
Coach Towne is a Clermont native. She played four years of varsity softball at East Ridge High School from 2002 to 2006. She also competed for the Clermont Crushers travel team from ages 10 to 18 before continuing her playing career at Lake-Sumter State College and Warner University.
Coach Towne is not new to the Tavares area. She has coached for the City of Tavares for the past six years helping with youth sports.
“My goal for this upcoming season is to build confidence in this program,” Towne says. “To show other schools that we have what it takes to compete and within the next few years of growth Tavares will be the school on everyone’s radar.”
Coach Towne’s coaching philosophies emphasize development beyond the field. She aims to build confident, hardworking athletes while helping players become better people, focusing on respect, accountability, teamwork, discipline and trust.
“Each player has something valuable to contribute,” she says. “My job is to recognize each player’s strengths, help them improve their weaknesses, and give them the confidence to believe in what they are capable of accomplishing.”
The Lady Bulldogs reached the FHSAA regional semifinals two seasons ago after a 13-9 campaign and posted multiple winning records from 2020 to 2022.
Coach Towne was named as a 1st Team player in 2004 alongside Brittany Scott Beall who played for Mount Dora and would go on to play softball for Auburn in college. Beall became one of Lake County’s most successful softball coaches in history winning multiple FHSAA State Championships with Eustis High School. Coach Beall is the current head coach of the FAMU program.
“With grit, perseverance, confidence, leadership, and the importance of being a good teammate, I believe we can revamp this program and make Tavares High School the place to be,” says Coach Towne.
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.
