By Kyle Coppola
The Villages Girls Tennis Team Breaks School Win Record
On Thursday evening, The Villages girls’ tennis team reached heights the program has never experienced. For the first time in school history, The Lady Buffalo Tennis program broke the regular season wins record and now has 13 wins on the year. With a 7-0 victory, The Villages put an exclamation point on the regular season.
The 13 wins are a first in program history. It’s a program that has been developing for years. The team, under first-year head coach Kelly Hill, is dominating this year. A set of strong performances made the win possible.
(The Villages Girls Tennis team has really taken off in 2024. Congratulations to the entire team on the accomplishments this year.)
Senior Rayleigh Pounds defeated Tavares’ Abigail Dunn 8-0. Peyton Gardner also picked up an 8-0 win against Tavares’ Bailey Brown. Ellen Brooks and Erika Brandner took care of business. The closest contest of the night came when Katie Ortengren took on Kelly Lopez. Ortengren won 8-4 for the Buffalo.
In ladies’ doubles, it was Rayleigh Pounds and Ellen Brooks picking up the win against Abigail Dunn and Bailey Brown 8-1. Meanwhile, Peyton Gardner and Ava Logan won against Katelyn Lindbloom and Patel Diya 8-4.
(The new Villages Charter High School tennis complex offers a sun shade for spectators and competitors. It is a relaxing place to take in a tennis match. It will be the site of the district tournament.)
“I am just so proud of this team. I was not even made aware of the win record until we accomplished it,” said head coach Kelly Hill. Coach Hill is a first-year head coach. She took the reins from coach Tony Simonelli. This is her first season coaching girls’ tennis at the high school level. Last year was The Villages’ best year to date as they finished 12-3 on the season. The Buffalo are looking for much more this season.
Congratulations to The Villages. There are just a handful of regular-season contests remaining before districts, which will be held by The Villages this year.
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.
