By Kyle Coppola
Lake County Wins Cure All-Star Game 31-20 Against Osceola
The Cure All-Star football game between Osceola and Lake County is always a fun and competitive post season football matchup with some of the best talent that both counties have to offer. The game on Saturday afternoon did not dissapoint as both teams fought hard with Lake County coming out with a 31-20 win for their second straight win against Osceola.
The game took place at East Ridge High School in Clermont. Many local high school football stars took place in the game. In fact over 35 Lake County high school students played in the game. For many it was their final chance to make an impression for college scouts.
(The Mount Dora Hurricanes represented included from left to right Trent Sims, Afrifa Amoah-Mensah, Tommie Wheeler and Michael Crouch.)
Teams were decked out in pink for the Cure All-Star game. The game was 0-0 late in the first quarter before Cole O’Reily made a field goal and put Lake County up 3-0. O’Reily is one of the best kickers in Central Florida and made a big impression early on in the ball game. He would go on to have a perfect day kicking making all of the teams extra points as well.
On Osceola’s first drive of the game they were picked off in the endzone by East Ridge’s Timothy Moses. Moses had a good season for the Knights defensively this season with 34 tackles, two fumble recoveries and provided excelent downfield coverage the entire season. It was great to see Moses come out fired up.
(Umatilla’s Carson Logan won the U.S. Army Award of Excellence.)
The teams exchanged a few punts in the second quarter before Lake County would get a pick 6 touchdown from East Ridge High School’s Travarus Boykin. This was a huge opportunity for the senior. That made it 10-0 early in the second quarter.
Lake County would go on yet another offensive drive late in the 2nd quarter when Tavares High School’s Micah Doster would run the ball up the middle for a 35 yard touchdown run that would put Lake County up 17-0 against Osceola.
Eustis’s Troy Saladin played a flawless first half at quarterback. He picked right up where he left off this season with over 2,000 yards of total offense. Osceola would score with 6 seconds left in the first half to make it 17-7 at halftime. Quarterback Pierre Lewis threw it to Hilliard for the first points of the game.
Osceola had a nice opening drive during the 3rd quarter. They were able to make the score 17-14. With 5 minutes remaining in the 3rd quarter Lake County faked a punt and picked up 30 yards for a first down from Blaine Aswell. This was a game changing play.
(Tavares players to attend included Rakesh Drummond, Akayo Negron, Jacob Cox and Micah Doster. Here they stand with coach Burchfield with the winning trophy.)
The fake punt allowed Lake County to push the offense downfield before East Ridge senior Darius Daily would run it in for a 1 yard touchdown. Lake County was now leading 24-14 late in the 3rd quarter. Daily would score his 2nd touchdown on the day just a few minutes later on a short run and Lake County would go up 31-14 midway through the 4th quarter.
(Umatilla Head Football Coach Eric Samuels stands with the trophy along with Carson Logan, Aden Heinlen and Nathaniel Frazier.)
Osceola would score late in the game but at that point Lake County had the game well under control and hung on to win the Cure All-Star football game 31-20. It was great watching all the Lake County players who are often rivals compete together out there. They played a terrific game.
Our offensive MVP of the game has to go to running back Darius Daily who scored two touchdowns on the day. He and Troy Saladin were terrific. We also enjoyed watching Micah Doster who was very powerful.
Defensively our MVP goes to Travarus Boykin. His game changing pick six coupled with his impressive performance defensively. The East Ridge players truly had an amazing day out there and deserve plenty of credit.
(The Lake County team holding up the Cure All-Star trophy. This is the second year in a row that Lake County has come out victorious.)
Congratulations to Lake County for winning the Cure All-Star game!
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.
