Girls who wanted to play a team sport in the spring have always had two options: softball or lacrosse. Now, the Seminole Athletic Conference has opened the door for a new sport to take the lead: girls flag football.
Next January, the team will kick start its season under the guidance of coach David Attaway, who will add to his roles of Student Resource Officer and girls weightlifting coach. Although little information is known for dates and scheduling, he is still positive about the sport’s future at Hagerty.
“If you’re coaching or playing, you want to win, but we’ll see. [We will] do as good as we can and try to have some fun at the same time,” Attaway said.
Having a coach selected, athletics director Jay Getty has shifted his focus to building the actual team, starting with finding players. His biggest challenge is making sure the team is strong enough for competition without disrupting the current team selections and their rosters.
“Anytime you add another sport to your offerings, you worry about whether or not it’s just going to siphon from the teams that you currently have,” Getty said. “The question will be which level athletes will select that as an option, and then how quickly they would pick up the parameters of the game—it’s not powderpuff, it’s an actual sport.”
While the sport started in California in the 1970s, it made its way to Florida in the 1990s. In 2021, the National Football League (NFL) and Nike announced they would contribute $5 million to teams across the state, and advertised championship teams during the 2021 Super Bowl. These contributions have paved the way for the girls flag football teams in Seminole County.
In flag football, players are wearing brightly-colored belts with ‘flags’ hanging from them, which the opposing team pulls off to stop the player, simulating a tackle. While it has less practice and is done for fun, the layout of flag football is similar to powderpuff, the junior-senior flag football game during homecoming week. Many students with interest have been inspired by the mock-team, both spectators and players.
“When I heard that we could do flag [football] for this year, I was really excited. [Playing] powderpuff is to see how it goes. If I end up liking it, I would really like to join the team,” junior Elleigh Ackerman said.
This interest has also expanded to players in other sports, just as Getty predicted. The mechanics of the game include skills from sports like soccer, baseball and track, making the new team more appealing to some students.
“I’m a goalkeeper, so I’m not as involved. I kind of sit on the ball. But [in flag football] I feel like I’m more involved in it. It’s more of me playing with the teams than having me in the back of the goal,” soccer goalie Aryana Rosenblum said.
Regardless, flag football in Seminole County is set up to be a popular choice for girls, tackle or not, as seen in other counties. The sport is one of the fastest growing in the nation, with nearly 200 new teams in Florida in the last 10 years.
“[Girls] didn’t have an opportunity at first, so it gets girls into trying to play a sport they’re not used to or maybe try something different,” Rosenblum said.
Dates for interest meetings and tryouts have not been set yet, as Getty and Attaway will announce them closer to the spring season.
