September 30, 2024
South Lake High School Adds Girls Flag Football Team for Spring Season
By Kyle Coppola
South Lake High School Adds Girls Flag Football Team for Spring Season
Groveland, Fla. — South Lake High School is set to expand its athletic program this coming spring with the addition of a girls flag football team. This move marks the school’s continued commitment to offering more opportunities for female student-athletes in Lake County.
Veteran coach Jeff Acton, a fixture in the school’s sports community, has been named the head coach. Acton, who has a background in football and coaching multiple sports, is eager to take on the new challenge.
Flag football is growing rapidly in Florida, and it’s coming to South Lake High. This is a great opportunity for girls to showcase their athleticism and compete at a high level. Having personally announced girls flag football last year, the sport is competitive and its a lot of fun to watch.
The Eagles will compete in the Florida High School Athletic Association (FHSAA). The are joining a surge of schools throughout the state adopting girls flag football as an official varsity sport. In recent years The Villages, Wildwood Middle High, Lecanto and other programs have adopted Girls Flag Football as a varsity sport. The program aims to foster skill development, teamwork, and school pride while giving female athletes another sport to take part in.
South Lake High has been committed to diversifying it’s sports. The school is among the few with a wrestling program and now is one of the few with a varsity girls flag-football program.
The addition of girls flag football comes as the sport continues to gain momentum across Florida, fueled by FHSAA’s increasing support and the growing number of scholarships offered to female athletes in flag football at the collegiate level. It will be fun to see where we are in the next decade as the sport continues to grow.
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.
