It’s a Friday in late August and that means high school football is heating up across Indiana. But on Thursday nights and Saturday afternoons another type of football is growing, and it’s attracting girls.
The National Federation of High School Athletic Associations says high school flag football is the nation’s fastest growing emerging sport.
In Indiana that’s especially true among girls, who are eagerly embracing a version of the game that doesn’t allow physical contact. Instead of tackling the ball carrier, defenders stop them by pulling one of two flags tied to their belt. To prevent injury there’s also no blocking or even kicking the ball.
Having hit the 50-school threshold this school year, girls flag football, along with lacrosse, has reached the status of an emerging sport with the Indiana High School Athletic Association. There are already around 90 schools with teams. If 10 more add the sport, the association will recognize it as a state championship sport, the level commonly called varsity.
At Penn High School on Thursday, coach Jerimiah Maggart was prepping for their first game ever later that evening at St. Joe.
Maggart says Penn has a seven-game season planned, with games against every Northern Indiana Conference school except Marian, the only school in the conference yet to start a team.
He says 44 girls had tried out last August for 25 spots on the team.
“The girls we kept are doing great as far as practicing and all those things, and developing the skills and learning the game. So I’m really looking forward to today, just seeing where we’re at and what we need to get better at.”
It turned out Maggart apparently prepared his team well. Penn beat St. Joe 26-12. Ensuring the Kingsmen win were two interceptions by a Penn senior who said she’s new to football.
Little returned one of those interceptions for a touchdown. Afterward she was all smiles and maybe a bit surprised to have been a star of the game.
“It feels amazing, yes. I never was into it. I don’t have any brothers. I never used to like play football. I played Powder Puff for Penn so I did that since Freshman year.”
Little is also a starting guard on Penn’s basketball team. Unlike her, the player who threw her those interceptions, St. Joe quarterback Myla Blazejewski, has long loved football.
“I’ve been a football fan my whole life. I’m a Cincinnati Bengals fan, Who dey? Notre Dame. I’ve always wanted to get a chance to play and as soon as they said that this was going to be a sport, I was so excited. I’ve always played with my brother and my dad, and so I’m getting to play real football.”
You could tell by the way she was hurling tight spirals down the field all game that she’s thrown a football for awhile.
“She has been doing that her whole life," says her mom, Kasey Buckles. “She’s been throwing with her younger brother. We go to a lot of tailgates and she can always be seen out there throwing the ball with whoever will do it with her.”
Like Little, Blazejewski excels in another sport, softball, where she’s a pitcher.
“As a softball pitcher I have to be like a leader on the field at all times and I have to be able to command my defense, and tell them what to be able to do, and I have to know what’s going on everywhere and be able to see a lot going on at once.”
The junior and her mom hope those 10 more schools will start teams soon, before her senior year. Buckles seemed confident that will happen after watching the first game.
“This is so exciting," Buckles says. "If you come to one of these games you’ll just really be struck by how into it the girls are, how much they support one another, and also how athletic they are.”
Riley and LaVille squared off on St. Joe’s field after the Penn-St. Joe game. The Riley Wildcats started their program in the spring of last year and have forged a relationship with the Indianapolis Colts, who, along with the NFL, have been heavily promoting the game. The Colts appointed Riley Athletic Director Seabe Gavin Jr. to their steering committee for girls flag football.
Gavin says he was the first in the South Bend area to answer the Colts’ call-out to school athletic officials, and he credited principal Shawn Henderson for quickly buying in.
”It’s an opportunity to get young ladies involved in something different and once they got involved, it really caught fire," Gavin says.
IHSAA assistant commissioner Robert Faulkens says Riley fielded one of the state’s first eight teams who came to Indianapolis for clinics last year. The Colts last year even sent Riley player Kayla Wright to Detroit for the NFL Draft, where she helped announce the team’s picks before millions of viewers.
While it was a lot of fun, Wright’s moment in the spotlight isn't what the IHSAA is after for these girls.
“I’m a former principal," Faulkens says, "and I think any opportunity you give a kid to participate in your school is a great opportunity.”
