Girls flag football booms in Sacramento as California’s newest sport. Why it’s so popular
As one of only a handful of Sac-Joaquin Section football coaches with more than 225 career victories, Tony Martello doesn’t have anything to prove.
The 16 league championships and four section banners help underscore that point. Martello hung up his whistle following the 2021 football season after 26 years of coaching his alma mater, Colfax High School. But here he is again, ahead of the 2023 season, practicing offensive schemes — “scripts” as he likes to call them — with a different type of football team.
This is the inaugural season for girls flag football as a sanctioned sport across California. In January, the sport was met with unanimous approval by the California Interscholastic Federation, the state’s governing body for high school sports. Sac-Joaquin Section assistant commissioner Will DeBoard said it was one of the quickest turnarounds for approving a new sport.
“The interest for girls flag football was through the roof from the very beginning,” he said. “I don’t know if we’ve ever had a new sport come in and have this type of growth so fast so soon.”
As for finding a coach at Colfax, who better than Martello? Although he says he didn’t miss the Friday night lights in that one-year hiatus, it also didn’t take much nudging to bring him back to coaching.
“I’m still finding myself, still reinventing myself,” Martello said during a recent practice.
He doesn’t carry the same intensity he used to as a tackle football coach with the boys. Part of his reinvention is getting back to the fundamentals — a must for those who’ve never played the game.
“I’ve just learned to teach from the ground level, the very, very basics, because that’s obviously where they’re at,” Martello said of his group of 20 lady Falcons. “I just want our girls to have a good experience, have fun, improve and feel like they’re working towards something.”
Martello’s girls are just as eager and hungry to learn and succeed as any of their male counterparts on the gridiron. They come to practice ready but are also reassured by the presence of a 200-game winner.
“He knows so much,” Colfax junior quarterback Laurlyn Massick said. “If we’re lost, we just ask and he knows the answer to everything.”
Girls have always been allowed to play high school tackle football with the boys. But this is something new that the girls can call their own.
“Getting to watch all the boys and going to all their Friday night football games is always so fun,” Colfax sophomore Kaylee Fore said. “Now it’s kind of like we’re a part of it and it’s our own thing.”
Seventy teams playing
There are 70 teams filling nine leagues throughout the section in this inaugural season. Five leagues comprising 37 teams are based in the greater Sacramento area with hopes of adding more as interest continues to grow. DeBoard said schools within the Elk Grove Unified School District and Modesto City Schools have committed to starting programs next year.
At Del Oro in Loomis, nearly 80 girls have been practicing at Golden Eagle Stadium with seemingly more coming out every day, said head coach Steve Birch. Like Martello at Colfax, Birch was a football lifer, the defensive coordinator for championship teams at Del Oro, but he welcomed this challenge and change of pace.
“We have more players coming out than we ordered jerseys for,” Birch said. “It’s such a big deal of football in high school, right? It’s always been boys, you know, so to open up the avenue of scoring touchdowns and being in front of a big crowd, that’s what we want (the girls) to get.”
Del Oro players enjoyed their old powder puff games so much in the past that they strongly considered starting a flag football club at the school. Now their opportunity to compete on a much larger scale is here.
“Giving girls a chance at a sport like football is the biggest meaning to us because we’ve always wanted a shot at something like that,” Del Oro senior linebacker Megan Matthews said. “We have our own sports, but it’s always boys football as the biggest thing, especially in high school. And now that we get that opportunity and people are actually excited about it, it’s super cool.”
Christian Brothers defeated Del Oro 24-6 in an opener on Monday night after it was a 6-6 game at the half.
At St. Francis, the only all-girls high school in Sacramento, the chance to field a flag football team means a lot to head coach Melissa Triebwasser, who grew up watching and studying the game, aspiring to one day become a football coach.
“It literally is a dream come true for me,” Triebwasser said. “I remember watching the 49ers-Bengals Super Bowl when I was a really little kid. When all my friends were watching cartoons on Saturday morning, I was watching Notre Dame football. This is something that I have literally loved as far back as I can remember.”
Triebwasser teaches a media course at St. Francis and co-hosts a podcast covering TCU football, her alma mater. She knows her stuff. She had close to 75 attentive girls trying out for the team, moving practice indoors to beat triple-digit heat.
“There’s something so unique about the symbiosis of the game of football and how it is the ultimate team sport,” Triebwasser said. “To get to bring that to our girls, to our student-athletes, and share a ton of the lessons that you learned, not just on the field but off the field with this game, I could not be more fired up.”
Flag football has been a competitive girls sport for grades 5-8 in the local Parochial Athletic League, which historically has fed student-athletes to schools such as St. Francis. So the Troubadours will have experienced players coming in as freshmen. The same can be said for Sacramento Adventist Academy in Carmichael, where the Capitals have played flag football against other club teams for more than 20 years.
“All the freshmen that are here played P.A.L. with me, so I think it’s really interesting now with all the talents coming from all the different schools to one place,” St. Francis freshman Haydyn Haecker said. “It’s competitive, but at the end of the day, we’re still teaching each other, even if we’re competing for the same spot.”
Troubadours senior Sophie Fahey also played in the P.A.L. as a seventh-grader but never again had the opportunity. Her eighth-grade year was hit by COVID and, until now, there were no other competitive flag football opportunities at the high school level. More than 50 years after the passage of Title IX, the law that mandates gender equity, opportunities like this are not taken for granted.
“I think it’s such an important thing,” Fahey said. “Girls are always looking for more opportunities to play sports. I personally love getting involved anywhere I can.”
How big can it get?
The section’s bylaws state that at least 30% of member schools must play a sport in order to have a postseason. With the immediate and robust growth of girls flag football, there will be section champions crowned at the end of this season.
“Historically, we’ve allowed newer sports to grow organically and at their own pace before we can have a postseason,” DeBoard said. “But girls flag football grew so fast so soon that we’re already above that threshold.”
Still, Birch of Del Oro said more teams are needed, saying, “This year is all about a great experience and promoting the game. We only have about a third of the section playing flag football. We need to have 100% of them.”
DeBoard said at the end of the regular season there will be two playoff divisions, separated by enrollment, each with a 16-team bracket.
In July, NFL Hall of Famer and San Francisco 49ers legend Steve Young announced he would help coach his daughters’ Bay Area flag football team at Menlo School in Atherton.
“A name like that can cause a splash, but I don’t think this sport needed it,” DeBoard said. “There’s just a lot of excitement around it already.”
Teams are scheduled to play two games a week, some under the lights.
Breaking down the rules
Girls flag football is similar to tackle football with a few variations — some obvious, some not so much.
▪ It’s seven-on-seven with every player wearing a belt with three flags. Games consist of two 20-minute halves with running clocks until the final two minutes of each half.
▪ De-flagging takes the place of tackling. A player is “down” at the spot their flag is pulled.
▪ No kickoffs. The offensive team starts at its own 20-yard line and has four downs to reach each “line to gain” (midfield, the opponent’s 20-yard line, and then the end zone).
▪ There is a “no run zone” within five yards of each line to gain and end zone, where teams may not run the ball. If they are within those five yards, the quarterback must throw the ball to reach the line to gain unless the defense blitzes.
▪ The offense can snap the ball to any player at least two yards behind the line of scrimmage. That player is considered the quarterback for that play. The QB may not run the ball more than once per series of downs.
▪ Ball carriers may not stiff-arm, hurdle, dive, spin or hinder a defender from pulling their flag in any way. Fumbles hitting the ground are considered dead, but fumbles in the air are live and may be advanced either direction.
▪ Any defensive player can rush the QB if they are at least seven yards from the line of scrimmage at the start of the play. Defenses have unlimited blitzes, but only two players may rush the QB at a time and must not touch the passer’s arm.
▪ Defenders must make a play on the flag, not the ball, and cannot pull flags off players who haven’t touched the ball.
▪ No punting. On fourth down, the offensive team must declare whether it’s going for it or “punting,” where the defensive team will take over at the far 20-yard line.
▪ No kicking for the point-after attempt. After scoring a touchdown, teams may elect to go for one point from five yards out or two points from 10 yards away.
The section has a full list of flag football rules on its website.
Who’s playing?
A list of flag football leagues throughout the Sac-Joaquin Section:
▪ Capital Athletic League: Capital Christian, Christian Brothers, Del Campo, El Camino, Grant, Rio Americano, Vista del Lago.
▪ Capital Valley Conference: Antelope, Bella Vista, Inderkum, Oakmont, Roseville, West Park, Woodcreek, Yuba City.
▪ Golden Empire League: Casa Roble, Dixon, Mesa Verde, Mira Loma, Pioneer, Rio Linda, Sac Adventist, Woodland.
▪ Pioneer Valley League: Center, Colfax, Cordova, Foresthill, Placer.
▪ Sierra Foothill League: Davis, Del Oro, Folsom, Granite Bay, Oak Ridge, Rocklin, St. Francis, Whitney.
▪ Central California Conference: Atwater, Buhach Colony, Central Valley, El Capitan, Golden Valley, Livingston, Merced, Patterson.
▪ San Joaquin Athletic Association: Bear Creek, Chavez, Edison, Franklin-Stockton, Linden, McNair, Stagg, Weston Ranch.
▪ Tri-City Athletic League: Able Charter, Central Catholic, Lincoln-Stockton, Lodi, Millennium, Sierra, St. Mary’s, Tokay, Tracy, West.
▪ Western Athletic Conference: Ceres, Escalon, Lathrop, Los Banos, Mariposa County, Mountain House, Orestimba, Pacheco.
This story was originally published August 24, 2023 at 5:00 AM.