The first sanctioned season of high school flag football was seen a major success in Colorado. The pilot program that was spearheaded by the Denver Broncos created vast interested in the sport that culminated with Mountain View and Mountain Vista capturing state championships last fall.
Now imagine players getting their start at much younger age.
It was only natural that the Gold Crown Foundation was there to take that ball and run with it. One of the biggest core values for Gold Crown is creating opportunities for kids to get involved in athletics, stay active and learn lifelong skills.
The sport of football as a whole checks all those boxes, but it’s Gold Crown’s girls flag football program that has seen rapid growth and is putting kids of all ages on track to get involved and find success on the field and in life as a result.
“The best part seeing the energy of the girls coming out,” Gold Crown sports program director April Thompson said. “We love the numbers and how much it has grown, but we really just love to see the girls come out and have fun. We want the kids to get better, but we also want them to have fun.”
Gold Crown’s spring flag football league has indeed seen tremendous growth since getting started. This year, 185 girls were playing which amounted to a 75% growth from the first year of the league.
The practice play model that Gold Crown has adopted has made it efficient for the kids and feasible for the parents. The girls spend the early part of each session on skill development, learning the rules and position play before breaking out in games and competing for the rest of the day.
Practices are structured to ensure that coaches can come in and quickly understand what is trying to be accomplished with each session. The practice plans are created by Amber Craft, a player/owner for the Denver Bandits women’s football team.
Part of teaching and encouraging kids is finding coaches who can make the experience positive and memorable for those kids. Riley Steele is a great example of this.
She got a job working at Gold Crown, manning a check-in desk for recreational sports. She worked with the volleyball program and then when coaches were needed for flag football, she jumped at the chance.
“I love sports and I’ve been playing sports my whole life,” Steele said. “I have little cousins so helping kids is a lot of fun for me. I love seeing them enjoy something and learn something.”
On a brisk Saturday afternoon in mid-May, Steele is working with a group of kids in Grades 3-5. Gold Crown also offers flag football play for 6th-8th graders and even high school kids who maybe didn’t play for their school teams in the fall, or are just looking for extra reps.
When keeping an eye on the future, the opportunity to get these kids out at a younger age will certainly promote skill development on a quicker scale. Flag football will start operating in line with other high school sports that benefit from kids playing with outside recreational teams or high-level club teams.
“If you see any high schools with feeder programs or youth programs, they’re going to be more successful,” Thompson said. “They built it, they started younger and kids wanted to keep to going and have those opportunities. It’s huge.”
The spring season is over, but the summer and fall will provide more opportunities for girls to get involved in flag football. More information can be found at Gold Crown’s website.
(Photo courtesy of Gold Crown Foundation)
