I won my first championship as a head coach! As a football fan and supporter of women’s sports, I volunteered to be a coach in my school’s annual girl’s flag football game. As someone who started out in sports at 5-years-old playing flag football, I was automatically drawn to coaching it.
After picking my offensive and defensive coordinators, and then drafting my players, I worked with my coaches to put together our playbook. We only had a few after-school practices over a two week span, and most of our players didn’t show up to every practice because they either had to go to work, or they were involved in other sports teams at the school.
GAMEDAY: April 17th was the official game day. All day long at school there was trash talk between the coaches about who was going to win. There were three teams playing in the tournament, and my team was the purple team – which is my favorite color (hence this website’s color scheme), so I knew we were going to win it all (lol). The games took place on our school’s football / soccer field after school on a perfectly sunny and 70 degrees day.
Our first game was against the blue team. We won it by two touchdowns, with the winning score coming on a 20-yard touchdown pass. Our next game was against the winner of the blue versus black game. The black team won and would be our victim in the championship game.
CHAMPIONSHIP GAME: In the final game of the day, my adrenaline was pumping because I really wanted to win the championship. My mom and dad were there, which made it extra important to me because my parents are always supporting what I do and my dad is a coach. The game was super fun and competitive but, we won by a touchdown at the very end of the game clock.
WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT COACHING: I learned that coaching can be nerve-racking but fun. Having a game plan is important, but also having good players who understand the game is just as important. The purple team girls had fun the whole time and really worked hard to win it all. I will definitely coach again my senior year!
