January 31, 2024
Umatilla High School Boys Basketball Celebrate Senior Night With 67-61 Victory Against MDCA
By Kyle Coppola
Umatilla High School Boys Basketball Celebrate Senior Night With 67-61 Victory Against MDCA
The Umatilla High School Bulldogs celebrated their senior night with a 67-61 win against Mount Dora Christian Academy. These two schools have had some close games over the years, especially this season when Umatilla won on a last-second shot earlier in the season by a score of 62-60.
Umatilla High School celebrated six seniors this night, including #1 Jalen Pressley, #3 Artis James, #21 Henry Clendinen, #22 Sam Rotenberger, #23 Jadon Gibbs, and #32 Tyler Demetski. The senior night festivities are always fun and emotional, but there was still a game to be played, and it was a battle between both teams who call themselves the Bulldogs.
The first quarter was controlled by Umatilla High School, but MDCA was right there all night long. The score was 18-14 at the end of the first. MDCA would go on to score 16 points in the second quarter, making it a 32-30 game at halftime. It was looking like another classic between these two schools, and it would prove to be that way.
(The support from the school, community and faculty was amazing. All the players felt the love last night and the gym was loud! Umatilla High School’s gym is such a cool place and an intimate setting to watch a game.)
It was difficult for both teams to find penetration under the basket, as both teams were defensively sound for the most part, but Umatilla just had the slight edge all night long. MDCA kept it close heading into the final quarter, but Umatilla had too much left in the tank and wound up winning another close matchup 67-61.
(Head coach of Umatilla High Patrick Todd has been instrumental with getting this program back to winning games. Todd has over 500 wins in his career as a coach.)
For Umatilla High School, they moved to 18-4 on the season. They are 4-0 in Class 4A District 6. There is now just one game remaining in the regular season for Umatilla High School as they get set for the district tournament coming up next week.
For MDCA, they remain a respectable 13-11 this season. MDCA will play against Osceola on Thursday evening before turning their attention to the district tournament next week.
Congratulations to all the seniors at Umatilla High School who have been through a lot over the years. They are on a historic run at Umatilla High School. This program has not seen this amount of sustained success in the history of the boys’ basketball program, so it’s fun to see all the hard work paying off.
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.
