By Kyle Coppola
The Eustis Lady Panthers Softball Team Wins District Championship!
The Eustis Panthers have won the 2023 District 4A District 7Championship game against Vanguard. The Lady Panthers absolutely dominated the game from start to finish with the final score Eustis 8 Vanguard 1. The victory brought the Lady Panthers record to 18-5 on the season. The girls will now wait to see where they play in the FHSAA Regional Playoff rounds. The Panthers have one of the best pitchers in Lake & Sumter County and that is Lauren Levendoski.
Levendoski pitched flawlessly this season. She had an incredible 248 strikeouts this season while only giving up 10 earned runs the entire year! She had the lowest ERA out of any pitcher in our county at just an amazing 0.52. Absolutely insane numbers that were truly a sight to behold this year. Vanguard just couldn’t score any runs and the bats were working as well.
(Lauren “Libby” Levendoski has been one of the most dominant pitchers we have seen in this area in a very long time.)
Junior Ciara Maple had a batting average of .377 and was always dangerous at the plate. She had 29 hits and scored 20 runs this year. Meanwhile Lillie Smith had a .333 batting average and 23 hits on the year. She batted in 14 runs and scored 13 herself. Another contributor to the Panthers success was Junior Skyler Cloud. Many team members of the Panthers are just Juniors which is terrific for the program.
Cloud states that she is “Is a versatile player excelling at Hitting , strong defense outfield arm, quick baserunning and get it done pitcher. She can play every day and be an asset continuously. Cloud has a .319 batting average while producing 22 hits and scoring 16 runs, some of her many highlights this year.
The team lead by head coach Brittany Beall has excelled this season. Obviously Levendoski has been a huge part of that success but it’s a team effort and the entire team has played as one strong unit this year. Pitching, batting, camaraderie, this team has it all!
(Eustis Celebrating a win on Senior Night. Eustis would go onto win the District Championship against Vanguard 8-1.)
Now begins the toughest test of them all! The FHSAA playoffs begin this upcoming week. The brackets will be unveiled this weekend. Eustis should be one of the top teams on their side of the bracket. They have shown that they deserve to be one of those top seeds.
How far this team can go is unknown. The way they have been playing it’s not out of the question we could see them in the State Semifinals or Championship game. However this team takes things one game at a time. Now it’s single elimination, one bad game or loss will end the season.
We wish the Lady Panthers the best of luck in the FHSAA Tournament and we want to congratulate every member of the team for winning the District Championship! Go Panthers!
Photos Provided By:
Joe Off Photography fan zone
Eustis High School
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.
