A new high school sport has entered the fold in Mississippi.
The New Orleans Saints, in collaboration with the Mississippi High School Activities Association, announced the sanctioning of girls flag football on Jan. 28. Mississippi becomes the 14th U.S. state to have flag football as an official girls high school varsity sport.
“I’m excited for any opportunity for female sports to grow and for females to have an outlet to plug into,” Oxford athletic director Tabitha Beard said. “That’s always, always exciting.”
The Saints reached out to the MHSAA last year to see if it would be interested in a “pilot program” for the sport, a one-year trial run to see how the sport does. The executive board voted to approve in October after seeing how well the program did in Louisiana.
The sport’s inaugural season is set to kick off in March with 12 teams participating. Those schools include Brandon, East Central, George County, McComb, Meridian, Oak Grove, Perry Central, Picayune, Richland, South Pike, St. Martin and Vancleave.
“The Saints come in and they run the game day event, and they train the coaches, and they train the officials at zero cost to the schools. Nike provides uniforms and the flag football equipment,” LeAnna Dawson, assistant director of the MHSAA, said. “But because of the Saints organization doing this, and being the facilitator of the game days, it needed to be geographically close to them.”
All schools participating are within a three-hour drive of New Orleans.
Geography was also a factor when deciding where to play games. Venues will include Southwest Mississippi Community College in Summitt and Picayune High School. Each team participating will play six games.
“It’s six games just so we can see what the sport is like and have an idea of how that works with schools. And if our student athletes like flag football,” Dawson said. “It’s a kind of a safe way to try new sports before everybody jumps all in financially with it.”
Among those “jumping all in” could be schools in Northeast Mississippi.
Beard is disappointed that the schools involved in the pilot are so far away from Oxford, but is excited to see what happens.
“I hated that the preview of Mississippi this year was way down south, and we couldn’t really be a part of that,” she said. “But I’m anxious to see how that goes, and to talk to those A.D.’s and see how it all plays out.”
Once more teams from the north join in, schools like Oxford would be more than happy to start its own program. The interest is certainly there.
“I know that when we have our powder puff game for homecoming, the girls are intense. They love it,” Beard said. “I think it’ll be received well with the girls, so it’s just getting all those totals in place.”
Tupelo could also join in, but only if more schools from the north participate. Gregg Ellis, the director of marketing and communications at Tupelo Public Schools, feels that it’s hard to gauge interest until then.
“Until there’s more of a commitment from the northern schools,” he said. “They’re just kind of going to wait and see how things unfold first.”
The same goes for schools like Saltillo, who often need to make a 200-mile round trip for region games.
“We already travel an hour and a half or more to all of our division games,” Saltillo A.D. Jonathan Chaney said. “So that aspect would play a major part in the addition thereof.”
There is not a ton of interest in Saltillo as of now, but that could change if the current logistics of girls flag football do. Facilities also may be hard to find, given that so many teams already share them.
“While all are about giving our students more opportunities to be involved,” Chaney said. “There are multiple factors to be considered here.”
Softball and track and field currently have a strong grip on girls spring sports in Mississippi. However, Dawson is confident that there is a subset of girls athletes in the state, specifically those who grew up around football, who would be happy to join in.
“My dad’s a retired football and baseball coach. I’ve always loved football. Any kind of football. I’ve watched the combine with my husband. It doesn’t matter,” she said. “And I just think if you’re a young lady or and you grew up around football and brothers that played football or your family were football people, it gives you a chance to participate in the activity that you’ve watched.”
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