The McCallum girls flag football team started its second season as an official UIL sport with its first game against Northeast on March 28, beating the Raiders 39-35. Unlike other sports offered at McCallum, flag football isn’t most peoples’ primary sport, and those unique circumstances allow the program to create a place where healthy competition and community building can grow.
“There’s no pressure,” flag football coach Catherine O’Neal said. “I think it’s a really healthy way to exercise good old fashioned competition.”
Last year, the team made it to the playoffs, eventually losing to Bowie. For senior flag football player Kafia Jackson-Woods, she hopes they will make it to the playoffs again and have another chance for a winning season.
“I’m looking forward to winning every game and hopefully playing in the championship,” said Jackson–Woods.
The flag football team started at McCallum when the athletic coordinator Coach Gammerdinger got some girls together and created the team in the 2024-2025 school year. This contributed to an overall trend in flag football popularity. The Dallas Cowboys football team started sponsoring youth flag football teams in Texas. In fact, McCallum’s team uniforms came from them. Also contributing to the rise in popularity, the 2028 summer Olympics in Los Angeles will include both men and women’s flag football.
“[Flag football] is having this moment,” O’Neal said. “There’s flag football in colleges now, there’s social media hype. People are getting into it.”
Due to all of the interest, instead of doing tryouts, the flag football coaches decided to do a player pool, where the team goes to practice four days a week, and the coaches will evaluate and set the starting lineup of 15 people based on three standards.
“There’s a lot of interest, but the people who are showing up the most are evaluated based on attendance, attitude, and skill level,” said O’Neal.
One thing that makes flag football so popular is that it doesn’t require a lot of prior experience, whether you’re coaching the team or playing on the team.
“Coach G asked me to coach it and I told him I had no experience and he said it was okay,” said O’Neal.
Flag football is a sport that is open to anyone, not only because of the player pool but because most girls who play don’t go into it with a lot of prior experience. This is also part of what makes it fun for Jackson-Woods.
“I like how our team is full of athletes from different sports coming together to play,” said Jackson-Woods.
This mixing of players also gives the flag football team an opportunity to mix a lot of different talents together on the team.
“It’s like the all-star team,” O’Neal said. “We get these incredible athletes from like track, volleyball, soccer, softball, wrestling. The energy is fantastic and I love getting to meet all different girls across different sports at McCallum.”
In addition to flag football being a place for competition, it’s also a source of community for the girls on the team.
“The community is very uplifting and competitive on the team because everyone is very nice but they also want to win,” said junior Magnolia Meisel, a flag football player at McCallum. “I’m looking forward to the new members we have joining this team because it is an opportunity to meet so many new people.
While the flag football team has beaten both teams they’ve gone up against, they still have things they’d like to work on.
“I’m hoping we can improve our versatility,” Jackson-Woods said. “Learning new plays, learning how to be better offensively and practicing hard everyday.”
The team works to improve their skills because they get to showcase their skills not only against teams typically in McCallum’s district, but also with teams outside of the district.
“I love competing with other schools, especially ones that aren’t in our division for other sports because I like to see the different ways they play,” said Meisel.
For Jackson-Woods, part of practicing for games is getting confident in your abilities when you go into games. Whatever they’ve been doing has been working because they beat Northeast 39-35, and Crockett 36-12 in their first two district games.
“It felt great to beat both teams because we knew we could,” said Jackson-Woods.
The team will continue to play through the end of April, going up against Eastside and Lehman on April 11, Akins and Johnson on April 18 and Travis and Ann Richards on April 25. All of their games are at the Burger Stadium. If they win enough games, they’ll play in the first round of playoffs on May 2 where they will return to Burger Stadium.
“If we make it to the playoffs we just keep on playing,” said O’Neal.