By Kyle Coppola
South Lake High School Wrestling Sends Six Athletes to Regionals
Business is booming for the South Lake High School Eagles, who had six wrestlers qualify for Regionals this upcoming weekend in Deland. South Lake and a few other programs in Lake & Sumter County have been leading the way when it comes to the sport of Wrestling. The sport is continuing to grow in Lake & Sumter County, and we love to see that.
South Lake has a young team comprised mostly of freshman, sophomore, and junior students. There are currently no seniors that make up the South Lake wrestling team. The Eagles are coached by Darrian Mills on the boys’ side while Brant Pawlowski is the head coach on the girls’ side.
(A pair of district wrestling champions for South Lake High as Alexander Vila and Aden Pierce who rides atop Vila show off their gold medals.)
South Lake High is actually the only program in Lake County with a girls’ wrestling program. All other girls have to compete with boys if they choose to wrestle at other schools. South Lake High has worked hard at getting the girls’ wrestling program off the ground. They are having success with the program, which you can read about here.
As far as the South Lake Wrestlers go, Aden Pierce, who is a sophomore, dominated this past weekend and secured a 120-pound championship, one of two athletes to win the championship. The other championship won was by Alexander Vila, who is a junior. He competes in the 285 Heavyweight Class where he would be crowned as the champion.
Two wrestlers would take second-place medals home: Emmanuel Jones-Baez in the 132-pound class and Chase Coello in the 190-pound class. These were great showings for these sophomore student-athletes. Tegan Beltram would take home a 3rd place medal in the 144-pound class. Rounding out the medal placers was Jacob Imboden, who took home 4th place in the 126-pound class.
South Lake High is really excited about their chances in the Regionals this year. The Eagles will look to keep the momentum going. Assistant coaches Tim Edgemon, Damian Vila, Jadius Bognar, and Chontre Weathersbee have done an impressive job teaching these athletes the right techniques to get to this point. Wrestling is as much a team sport as it is an individual one.
Best of luck to the South Lake Eagles in Deland!
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.
