At the Damon Garcia Sports Complex in San Luis Obispo, the local flag football coed youth program, Friday Night Lights, played in their final games of the fall season with the sport blossoming in popularity garnering more interest from both boys and girls.
Friday Night Lights has been apart of SLO since 2015 and what started out as a program with just over 100 kids has increased to upwards of 900 kids according FNL Commissioner Mark Broersma.
“We knew back when we started this that the game of flag football is just a lot of fun and that's the reason why the participation levels are as high as it is,” Broersma said.
Jory Hoffman coaches his daughter and an almost all girls Tennessee Titans team that competes in the 5th/6th division as he’s seen firsthand the participation numbers grow among girls.
“You'll see girls kind of intermixed with some of the teams," Hoffman explained. "What I've seen over the last few years is several all girls teams, which is really cool.”
For the girls, they love showing people that they can play with anyone.
“When we go and we play boys and we win, it's really special because that usually doesn't happen a lot, and so it's really fun to get to like beat them and then have a lot of fun afterwards,” one girl explained.
The Michigan Wolverines ain the 7th/8th division and the Titans entered the semifinals as the last two remaining all girls or almost all girls teams as the number of girls in FNL has increased to about 80-90 girls participating.
“These girls are competing at such a high level," Hoffman said. "It's so fun to watch them compete against all these different teams.”
Not to mention with the CIF sanctioning girls flag football as a high school sport, many of these girls are wanting to play as they get into high school.
“Yeah, I think it'd be a lot of fun to play for a high school and get to get CIF banners," One Wolverines player said.
"You get to know even more people in high school and like get to come together and just play flag football for fun," another added.
This past season Lompoc was the only Central Coast Athletic Association program that fielded a team but come next fall, with more and more high schools interested as well as with greater youth participation, girls flag football could grow exponentially in the area.
