By Kyle Coppola
Student Athlete Highlight: Haytham Abdalla East Ridge High School
Haytham Abdalla is a senior at East Ridge High School and the captain of the varsity soccer team. He has been having a stellar season and is hoping to wrap up his high school career with another run in the FHSAA Soccer Playoffs.
(Abdalla celebrating after scoring a recent goal.)
Abdalla is a former State Champion. He was on the East Ridge Knights team who won the state championship last season finishing 19-3-1. Abdalla was ranked as the #15 soccer player nationally and 6th in the state of Florida.
This season East Ridge High school is coming into the district playoffs with a record of 10-6-1. Abdalla has been a big reason for the team’s success this season amassing 15 goals and leading the Knights with 31 points total.
(Abdalla loves his teammates and gets a big hug after scoring a recent goal against Leesburg.)
Between his teammates Amir Taylor who has 8 goals on the season and junior Davi Machado who has 6 goals this group is looking to try and do some damage in the district playoffs in order to get to the FHSAA playoffs.
East Ridge is currently ranked 5th in the district tournament and play Lake Brantley tomorrow night. If East Ridge does not win the game against Lake Brantley their season could be in jeopardy. If they do win, then the Knights will play West Orange on the 30th. West Orange is 8-4-1. The Knights play in a very hard district and class.
With Abdalla leading this team there is a good chance for an upset against Lake Brantley and if they do that, there is certainly a path to a district championship.
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.
