By Ed Piper
I don't know if it will come to San Diego--probably--but girls' flag football, pushed by the NFL for equity and public relations, is the newest sport we're seeing in high schools. Apparently, this Friday part of CIF will vote whether to accept flag football as a new school sport.
The challenge of establishing a new sport, as Kelly Drobeck explained it to me a couple of years ago, is that you want to start teams at multiple schools, make sure the programs are viable, then go forth toward having the sport certificated as an official CIF sport.
The worst thing would be to start-stop: giving the okay for a new sport, then have individual school teams close down, bit-by-bit, for lack of staffing, lack of facilities (especially on campus), and lack of support.
Kelly, the women's beach volleyball coach at La Jolla High after a Hall of Fame career coaching at Cathedral Catholic/USDHS, was the key mover leading to girls'/women's (women are 18 or over) beach volleyball being established in San Diego Section as an official sport. It took years. One of the boosts was that the NCAA, along the way, declared women's beach volleyball as an official college sport. That really gave the movement a boost, with athletic scholarships being offered to talented girls/women.
Boys' beach volleyball followed a couple of years later, lacking the official NCAA recognition that the women's game got earlier. Dave Jones, coach at La Jolla High, finally could say that his team was officially recognized by the CIF.
Serra High of Gardena, in greater Los Angeles, won the first flag football championship there over the weekend. It was a hullabaloo. Nowhere mentioned is the NFL's sponsorship of a lot of the efforts to establishing the sport. I'm a little cynical, but I don't want to draw away from the girls' enjoyment of competition: the NFL can point to its efforts in this area to promote how great it is in supporting equity. But, apart from that, if girls want to play another sport, why not allow them?
Locally, I see that Westview, Scripps Ranch, and Coronado are playing flag football. (You can view videos on NFHS.)
Another story talks openly about the NFL's pilot league, so it's not a secret.
GFSD, or Girls Flag San Diego, is a Facebook site listing K-12 involvement for girls in La Jolla, Pacific Beach, Poway, San Diego, Oceanside, Carlsbad, San Marcos, Encinitas, and Escondido.
Another news story says the sport is already played at high schools in Alabama and Nevada. Colleges in Florida, Georgia, and Kansas have teams in collegiate competition.
The Facebook site, viewing it from a skeptical viewpoint, shows a coercive table that moves from "Comfort Zone" to "Fear Zone" to "Learning Zone" to "Growth Zone". I'm sure it's true in many respects, but its attempts to attack and motivate seem so obvious. Who would want to land in the "Fear Zone" that specifies "Find excuses", "Be affected by others' opinions", and "Lack of self-confidence"? (The punctuation and capitalization are sloppy, as well.)
Under "Girls Flag San Diego", photos show girls from Cleveland, Ohio! Come on. They aren't local. The team is called "Browns Youth Football".
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