Saylor Swanson says it so casually you can almost miss it.
“I’ve always pictured myself playing quarterback,” Swanson, an Arvada West High junior, said Wednesday morning at the Broncos’ training facility.
She has been, really, for the past two years playing flag football in CHSAA’s pilot program.
She will be this fall, too, but in a slightly different capacity. She’ll be the quarterback for her team’s varsity program after Colorado on Tuesday became the 11th state to make girls flag football a sanctioned high school sport.
On Wednesday, Broncos owner Carrie Walton Penner, team executives and CHSSA commissioner Mike Krueger talked about the journey to get to this point, but also about what comes next.
Broadly, it’s a similar set of feelings for Swanson and the players as it is for the people tasked with implementing the sport and growing it around the state. It’ll be similar to the past two years in some ways, bigger in some ways and exciting all the same. And there’s plenty of work and growth ahead.
“I’m so glad it’s actually taken off,” Saylor said. “I played football when I was a little kid with my brothers and I’ve always wanted to play. I never expected it to be an option. I played co-ed when I was younger and I kind of quit because the boys were getting rough and I was the only girl.
“I’ve always wanted to play for an all-girls team and high school, playing with my friends, it’s just so awesome.”
The Broncos made it clear that the organization will be part of the next phase, too. They’ll continue providing funding and the team’s vice president of community impact and Denver Broncos Foundation executive director Allie Engelken also said they’ll provide education on grant opportunities through Nike, USA Football and other resources available to schools.
“We’re excited to continue to support this sport this season and beyond,” Engelken said. “We do that through not only financial commitment for schools as well as high-impact for youth, but also through a lot of programmatic elements.”
As it pertains to girls flag football, Engelken said those include, “officials and referee recruitment and training. Coaches clinics and sanctioning. Ensuring coaches feel prepared to coach an emerging sport. That includes a regional NFL Flag tournament. … that will continue in partnership with the NFL.
“We see our opportunity for support to continue to grow.”
Krueger noted many school districts face tight budgets in the first place — ”I’ve yet to talk to an athletic director who calls me and says, ‘I’m trying to figure out what to do with all the money I have,’” he said – but expressed confidence that girls flag football is well worth the relatively modest investment.
“The neat thing about girls flag football and flag football in general is that the barriers to it are not hard to overcome,” Krueger said. “It doesn’t take a lot of equipment. The jamboree styles that were incorporated, I know in talking to my colleges across the state — the athletic and activities directors — when you can run three games on one full-sized, 120-yard field, that makes the facility availability and equipment cost (more manageable) and you don’t need 30 or 40 people out there to have a team.”
Not only that, but the data collected so far shows more than half of the pilot program participants weren’t playing another fall sport. To Engelken and the others here Wednesday, that suggests the sport is poised to provide not only an alternate avenue but a new path altogether for girls around the state.
“That’s why this moment matters,” Walton Penner said. “It matters for every girl who loves football but has never seen a place for herself. It matters for every student who has watched others find their passion. For every high school kid looking for her team, her community, her people, this matters.”
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