January 12, 2024
Milestone Moment: Zion McRae of The Villages Surpasses 1,000 Career Points Scored
By Kyle Coppola
Milestone Moment: Zion McRae of The Villages Surpasses 1,000 Career Points Scored
Congratulations to The Villages girls’ varsity basketball player Zion McRae who recently scored her 1,000th basketball point. McRae has been dominant this year and has certainly been a very impactful player for The Villages this season.
Mcrae is averaging 25 points per game. She accounts for much of The Buffalo offense this year. She has 304 of the teams 608 total points scored. That is an amazing effort. McRae gets plenty of help from her teammates including freshman Eva Mann who has 80 points, senior Evah Watterson and sophomore Amiyah Flowers among others who have contributed for The Villages this season.
McRae is shooting 39% from the field but considering she has taken over 260 shots this season and made 102 of them those are very respectable numbers. But it’s not just offensively where McRae shines, it’s defensively as well.
McRae currently leads the team with 44 total steals and while Amiyah Flowers and Mckayla Crews lead the team in rebounds, McRae is always in on the action and has 58 so far this season. She has broken the 1,000-point mark and is only a junior. Most players take four years of hard work to accomplish this feat.
We appreciate the way that Zion plays the game as well. She is an unselfish player and leads the team in assists by a wide margin. She currently has 51 assists this year. She has the natural talent to make the players around her better and she certainly is having a terrific junior campaign.
When talking with head coach of The Villages Quez Porter, his eyes light up any time he talks about her “She is an amazing player, hard worker and dedicated player, incredible teammate, and above all else a good person.” Says coach Porter.
McRae transferred to The Villages for her junior year. She played at P.K. Yonge the past few seasons. She also played travel ball with coach Porter over the summertime. Her freshman year she averaged 18 points per game. Last year she averaged 21 points per game and this year is averaging 25 points per game. Those numbers are mind-blowing, and she also helped head coach Quez Porter become the all-time winningest girls coach at The Villages earlier this season which was a special moment.
Zion will be honored at an upcoming Villages home game in the coming week to celebrate her accomplishments. We wish McRae and The Villages the best of luck on the remainder of their 2024 season.
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.