By Kyle Coppola
Lake Minneola High Football Hires New Defensive Coordinator
The Lake Minneola High School Hawks’ defense will receive a huge boost as Coach Darryl Monroe comes on board. Monroe will be a great fit for Lake Minneola, which has been absolutely dominant in the past few years on offense. While the defense has also produced many outstanding and talented players, the change is a welcomed one.
Coach Monroe is no stranger to Florida. He played his high school football at Dr. Phillips, a team that Lake Minneola is very familiar with. After his high school playing career was over, Monroe played football in the NCAA for Washington State University from 2011 to 2014.
When his college career concluded, Monroe got into coaching football. His career began at Wekiva, where he served as defensive coordinator from 2017 to 2018. He then took a role as Outside Linebackers Coach for Ottawa University from 2017 to 2018. Monroe was also an offensive coordinator for West Orange High School along with the school’s quarterback coach from 2018 to 2020.
Most recently, Monroe had the first opportunity at a head coaching position in his career with Miami Senior High School from 2021 to 2022. Coach Grant Alford said, “Huge get for the program. Taking the foundation left by Coach T & building on top of it. The key to success for any program is consistency in the coaching staff & having the same expectations year after year. Coach T will be missed! Now I look forward to the Green & White Scrimmage,” said Coach Alford.
Lake Minneola, in a statement, said, “We are EXCITED to welcome our new Defensive Coordinator! Coach Monroe brings a wealth of knowledge on the defensive side of the ball from the college and high school level. We look forward to the energy that he will provide for our program.”
Lake Minneola is coming off a very successful season, which saw the Hawks finish 9-4 and made it to the Regional Finals against Lakeland. The 2024 season is shaping up to be one of the most exciting yet for the Lake Minneola program! We get to see the team on the field in just about 2 months when spring football comes around. We are excited to see what Lake Minneola looks like in 2024!
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.
