By Kyle Coppola
Leesburg High Girls Basketball Off To 8-0 Start
The Leesburg Girls Basketball team is off to a hot start to begin the 2023/2024 year. The Lady Yellow Jackets are demolishing teams and they have not been challenged at all to begin the year.
This team is winning games by sometimes upwards of 70 points. The Yellow Jackets posted an 83-8 win against Central from Brooksville just last week. That continued yesterday with a big win at home against East Ridge 70-20.
The program has seen a complete turnaround from last year when Leesburg finished 1-24 only winning one game all season. Something had to change and it appears it has.
Coach Sean Campbell who led the boys’ basketball teams to back-to-back State Titles a few years ago. They also have D’Mani Nettles on the team. If Nettles is reading this, he is one of the most fascinating 22-year-old coaches/businessman/realtor/student you will find. The list could go on and on with what this young man is bringing to the table and we will do a separate story on him in the near future.
However, the girls’ team has been led by Saige McCloud who has been electrifying this season. She is averaging above 25 points per game this year and she gets plenty of help from Ariyana Hester and her sister Aniya Hester who have been playing lights out to start the season.
While the competition that Leesburg is playing is not the caliber they will face later on in the season and in the FHSAA Playoffs you have to applaud their efforts. From a standpoint of beating teams, they should, they are certainly doing that.
McCloud is also leading the team in rebounds per game. She is an impressive athlete who has absolutely turned heads this season in Lake County.
The Lady Yellow Jackets will have a few district games against Belleview and Lecanto coming up. They also have Eustis on the schedule but there is almost no reason that this group of girls can’t run the table and win every regular season game this season.
What an impressive turnaround effort by Leesburg High. Could they make a deep run into the FHSAA Playoffs this season? If they stay healthy that is a possibility.
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.
