By Kyle Coppola
Tavares High Wrestling Team Makes History at Districts
The Tavares High Wrestling team, coached by Gavin Jones, finished 3rd in the District tournament and also made some history while doing it. Ethan Harris took first place for Tavares High in the 138-pound weight class to become only the second-ever Tavares High School wrestler to win a district championship. This is a significant step for Tavares High as they are beginning to see sustained success with the wrestling program.
Harris has been a beast all year, and he was certainly prevalent during the district meet last weekend. Harris is now the second Bulldog to ever win a district championship, the first being Trey Hanson last year, who is now attending Brewton-Parker College in Georgia.
(Trey Hanson graduated last year and became the first student-athlete at Tavares to win a district championship in wrestling. Trey was also the first student to earn a scholarship for weightlifting at Tavares. He competes for Brewton-Parker College in Georgia.)
Tavares would go on to take a few 2nd, 3rd, and 4th place medals, with a few athletes also finishing inside the top 6 with medals in their respective weight classes.
Now Ethan Harris and others will focus on the Regionals coming up this weekend in DeLand. Not only was history made on the boys’ side, but Tavares High Sophomore Victoria Barajas, who is a weightlifter, placed 7th in the 154-pound weight class at the girls’ Olympic 2A State Championship this past week. We want to send a big congratulations out to her for representing Lake County and Tavares High School well.
We want to send a big shoutout to all the Tavares High School Wrestlers who will be competing in the Regionals this weekend. Best of luck to every one of them!
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.
