As the school year comes to an end, we still have many sports actively playing and closing out their seasons as well. Without OSAA support and an extremely short season of only five weeks, flag football is often overlooked. However, despite these challenges, junior Adelaide Wallin says that the season is going really well, “even though a lot of people are new to the sport, everyone has been improving so much and we have really been locking in and winning games.”
Wallin explains that the flag team has a very good sense of community and connection with one another, and everyone on the team is enthusiastic and willing to work hard and improve. Junior Aven Darnell-Nelson seems to agree with her saying, “The environment and camaraderie of our team this year is great.”
Wallin says her goal this year is, “to be the best quarterback I can be for my team.” Similarly, Darnell-Nelson expressed that her goals for the season are to, “be a good leader, increase my knowledge of flag football, improve my run game, and keep practicing routes.” Darnell-Nelson says that “flag has been amazing this year. Head Coach Eric Scott and Coaches Senéad McElligot and Lucie Gruener are doing an amazing job.”
According to Darnell-Nelson, the South Eugene High School has two flag football teams, Team South and Team Axe. Both teams seemed to have improved immensely this year. Both teams have been playing mostly scrimmages, with Team South securing a back-to-back win against Willamette High School by over 30 points. Team Axe has a lot of new young talented players who challenged Team South in the flag football team’s civil war, winning by one point. When asked about if she had anything else to share with the South community, Wallin shared that “we are very grateful to have Eric step up to be our coach after everything that happened with cutting flag. We have worked very hard to have a program even though an official one was taken from us.”
Flag football is a fun, emerging sport that creates a wonderful, comforting, diverse sense of community, as girls from all different sports join the teams every year, and is a great way to relieve stress during finals. Unfortunately, it is too late to join this year, as practice is over. However, you should strongly consider joining either team next spring if you’re looking for a fun, welcoming, exciting sport to join! Flag players at South have started a fundraiser to be able to continue playing next year. There are flyers around the school as well as a post on their Instagram with information on how to donate. The goal? To return to playing at OSAA level, and represent South Eugene High School in their OSAA league. As Darnell-Nelson says, “We want to do this not just for our team, but for all 4J High School girls who want to play.”
Article by Noa Gitelson