By: Nicholas Maksud and Dominic Scianna
High School Girls Flag Football has come full circle since its debut in the Chicago Public League (CPL) in 2021. The sport has tripled in participation from a grassroots idea that embraced 22 teams in year one to now enabling more than 100 teams across Chicagoland to compete in the upcoming 2023 fall season.
And, because of the rise in popularity of the sport, more opportunities for exposure have been offered for Chicago Public School (CPS) student-athletes, like the first-ever High School Girls Flag Football Summer League competition that was held this year. Powered by Wintrust and supported by USA Football as integral sponsors, the abbreviated summer schedule took shape and was a first-year success.
On Thursday, July 27, the summer league’s Final Four teams (Whitney Young, Simeon, King, and Von Steuben) battled it out to crown a champion at Winnemac Stadium on the city’s north side. Behind athletic quarterback Nyera Neal, the King Jaguars held off a tough Whitney Young Dolphins squad 26-14 in the title game to become summer league champions.
Neal ran for two TD’s and threw for two more scores to pace the win.
“Our girls worked hard last year and now having Nyera this year has been a big reason why we’ve gone undefeated as a team this summer,” King head coach Lane Barlow said. “Nyera’s only a sophomore and our goal is to have her play on the U16 USA national girl’s flag football team.”
Whitney Young and head coach Valerie Spann received the runner-up summer trophy, winning its semi-final game over Von Steuben by a score of 20-0 before falling to King in the championship game. Junior quarterback Marcela Matallana threw for two touchdowns, her last to sophomore wide receiver Denisse Mayhay to tie the score at 14-14 midway through the second half, but King answered with two more second-half scores to earn the victory.
Finally, the Von Steuben Panthers (coached by Ramon Tahayda) and Simeon Wolverines had successful Final Four runs this summer. The season also took on added meaning for Wolverines head coach Erin Pruitt and her players.
“The girls love to play, they want to play all year round,” said Pruitt. “The summer league gives them more opportunities to continue to play from July through October, and as we know, there are scholarships that are available if they want to continue playing in college.”
The semi-finals and championship games also featured trailblazing USA Football Alumni Darcy Lewis (2022), Jill Airaki, and Elizabeth Okey, 2013 alum and vice president of Wintrust. Linda Bache, owner of the Chicago Force women’s football team, was also a featured guest in attendance.
**Photos Courtesy of Chicago Public League, Brandon Parker and Stephon Lawson
First-ever Chicago Public League Girls Football Summer League Kicks Off
The 2023 High School Girls Summer Flag Football League kicked off July 18th at Winnemac Stadium and Solorio High Schools as it began its third straight season as a CPS sport.
This summer league, in partnership with Wintrust and USA Football, has provided an opportunity for student-athletes to gain key skill development and gameplay experience this summer.
“This sport fits a lot of students who normally wouldn’t play a sport at all in the fall, so this really fills a niche,” Northside Prep head coach Henry Henderson said.
With the league just beginning its third year, it has been rapidly expanding in such a short amount of time. What started out with just over 20 teams in its first year has now expanded to over 40 teams in its second year and nearly 70 teams from the Chicago Public League for the upcoming 2023 fall season.
Lane Tech’s Head Coach Caroline Schwartz talked about the rapid growth of the league not in just the past few weeks.
“They’ve grown a lot the past few weeks because we’ve been offering the CPS skills camp for flag football and girls are showing up and have never touched a ball,” Schwartz said. “They might have seen it or their brother plays and they think it looks fun and then they come out, dropping things, and are confused. But even the next day they are showing growth.”
Schwartz also talked about what a league like this could accomplish for the student-athletes.
“It’s opening the door for younger girls to more women playing those male dominated sports and just getting more kids into teams, be good teammates, be good people,” she said.
While this game can bring many opportunities to collegiate scholarships like we saw with Solorio’s Karla Martinez, Henderson talked about some of the skills that can be taken from a league like this that are off the field.
“It’ll get more young women interested in maybe having sports as a career beyond the playing field in addition to working in the training field as a medical trainer or maybe going into the front office in sports business,” Henderson said. “If they are exposed to this early, maybe they develop a like or a love for it or a passion for it over a course of time and now that we see more colleges offering more business programs and more sports like flag football, they’ll have more options when they graduate.”
A league like this not only opens doors on the field, but can lead to more opportunities off the field. The flag football season will start up again in the fall season of 2023 for its third season.
