A year ago, Carlton Rosemond volunteered to help coach a girls flag football club at Evanston Township High School. Today, he leads a sectional championship-winning varsity program that will field a junior varsity and freshman team next season.
Rosemond began tearing up as he talked about his experience coaching the all-girls flag football team to a sectional championship during the first season the sport had an Illinois High School Association-run state series.
“I’m getting emotional because it helped me develop into the coach I am now,” he said as his voice cracked.
Rosemond began as a volunteer coach for the club. When the club was approved to become a varsity sport for the 2024 fall season, he said the girls encouraged him to apply for the head coach position.
While most of the girls on the team did not have much flag football experience, Rosemond said they put in the extra hours to learn, even when the program was still a club.
“The girls made it really easy,” Rosemond said. “When you have athletes who are like sponges, just willing to soak up whatever you’re teaching them, they tend to want to come back for more.”
As a club, the program only practiced two days a week, but Rosemond offered to devote extra individual training an additional two days a week. He said roughly a quarter of the 40 to 50 girls in the club regularly showed up to receive one-on-one development.
When the program became an IHSA sport, Rosemond said there were girls who were ahead of the curve, which helped the overall development of the team.
As a former ETHS basketball coach, Rosemond said he applied his experience and the self-described philosophy of “winning at all costs.” Working with the girls in ETHS’ flag program, however, he said taught him to focus on positive experiences and making sure his players had fun.
“I want them to enjoy the journey, whether we win or not,” Rosemond said. “The ultimate prize for us is having a sisterhood, having a family-oriented system where the girls enjoy just being around each other and learning the game.”
Rosemond said he wants to create a team culture where every girl who plays falls in love with the sport.
This coaching style has led to Rosemond anticipating that he’ll retain most of last year’s roster.
“I was just talking to one of our returning players for next year, she was like, ‘Man, I’m just waiting for flag football to get here,’” Rosemond said.
The beauty of flag football is that girls don’t need any experience to play it, he said, nor do they need to have the skills to play every position, unlike the other sports he used to coach like basketball and softball.
He said that in basketball, every player has to be competent in various skills, including dribbling and shooting. Yet flag football is a position-based sport, where you can specialize in one area.
“You don’t have to be good at it all,” Rosemond said. “Whether it’s rushing, being a defender, pulling flags, catching the ball, you can be good at one thing and make an impact on this team.”
There’s also growing interest in the sport.
Last season, the team had 18 girls on the roster. Rosemond said he has talked to many girls who weren’t aware of the program last year but want to join for the upcoming season, when the program will have varsity, junior varsity and freshman teams.
How it was all flagged off
Girls flag football kicked off in the state of Illinois with a Chicago Public Schools’ league in 2021. Then-CPS Senior Manager of Elementary Sports Juliana Zavala partnered with the Chicago Bears’ Manager of Youth and High School Football Gustavo Silva to pilot a program in the city, with the Bears’ making donations to some teams.
“Honestly, without the Chicago Bears, we wouldn’t be having as much success as we do now with the growth and how rapid it is,” Zavala said.
Zavala and Silva’s vision was an inclusive program where girls in the city could be a part of “this beautiful game.” Zavala said that if this can come to fruition in the city of Chicago, it could expand into the rest of Illinois.
According to Zavala, they initially wanted to start with six to eight schools in a pilot girls flag football league.
“When I sent out the interest form to the athletic directors in CPS, to my surprise, we had about 26 that showed interest,” Zavala said.
The inaugural season of the league took place in the fall of 2021 with 21 teams, Zavala said.
In its second year, she said the program grew to include 48 CPS schools, and the Bears reached out to the DuPage and Cook districts to start a suburban league.
Still gaining yardage
The sport only continues to grow: 68 CPS schools are now participating, and more districts in Chicago’s suburbs are involved. It became an IHSA-sanctioned sport in 2023, according to IHSA Assistant Executive Director Tracie Henry, with plans to eventually start a state series.
“I’m really happy with the support that came through,” Zavala said. “We had athletic directors that believed in this mission of giving girls a league of their own.”
According to Zavala, girls flag football is the fastest-growing IHSA sport in the state. Within three years of its existence on the high school level, it became IHSA-sanctioned.
Last season, 154 of the 816 Illinois high schools fielded girls’ flag programs, according to Henry. She said she now expects 170 schools to have girls’ teams next season.
Zavala said she credits this rapid growth to several factors, one being interest from the girls.
“They don’t want powderpuff anymore,” she said. “They don’t want to play just once a year.”
This enthusiasm was one factor for pushing the sport closer to official recognition.
The IHSA added a state series when they reached the IHSA benchmark — which is when 10% of Illinois high schools engage in regularly scheduled competitions for a sport, according to Henry. The inaugural IHSA Girls Flag Football State Championship was announced on Feb. 14, 2024.
The first state final was held on Oct. 18-19, 2024, with William Fremd High School beating Guilford High School to take the trophy.
While the 2024-2025 season utilized a state rulebook, the National Federation of State High School Associations is currently writing an updated book to be released May 2025, in which the IHSA will adopt the NFHS’s guidelines for future seasons.
Flagged by the Bears
According to Zavala, the Chicago Bears have been Illinois girls flag football’s “biggest fans.”
The Bears regularly host coaching clinics for flag coaches that help those who have tackling experience to those who have none at all, Zavala said. They also host clinics for girls flag teams.
“They open their doors so much to let us host many events there,” Zavala said. “It’s nice to see that in a male-dominated environment, the girls go into this facility and feel like it’s their own. They feel like it’s their home.”
Aside from the clinics, the Bears have also supported girls flag players with other programs and events.
Since the CPS league’s beginning, the team has invited flag football teams to watch their training camp practices and hosted the girls flag All-State dinner two years in a row in Halas Hall, the Bears’ headquarters.
The Bears have also supported girls flag players’ professional development by beginning an annual Scout School program, where girls flag players learn about the role of college and professional football scouts. The organization has also held a career expo for girls to network with Bears staff, among other initiatives.
Beyond the flags
For Lakes Community High School sophomore Sarah Annexstad, who plays defense, a highlight of last year’s flag football season was returning to campus after winning the regional championship.
“There was an actual football game going on, and we ran across the field during halftime,” Annexstad said. “The whole school was cheering for us, and it just really sunk in.”
Some of Annexstad’s favorite memories from the season were bonding moments with her teammates.
None of them knew each other before because they all came from different sports backgrounds, Annexstad said, but they instantly connected and formed strong bonds.
“The bus rides were so much fun,” she said. “We had such a strong bond, and we’d always be playing music, singing along.”
Flag hasn’t only created bonds between the players. Zavala said she has heard from several parents of players who said they now have a closer relationship with their daughters because of the sport.
Some dads of players have also told Zavala they now watch football on Sundays with their daughters and then get to see them play the game they love during the week.
The expansion of the sport has also given young girls female athletes to admire.
Nicholas Hildreth, a girls flag coach at Willowbrook High School in Villa Park, said his 10 year-old daughter who plays youth travel flag looks up to girls on Willowbrook’s teams as role models.
“Football lends itself to having athletes to look up to, and female athletes didn’t necessarily have many opportunities for that,” he said. “This now provides that for all our young girls.”
Willowbrook’s flag program has also provided an opportunity for female athletes to have the Friday night high school football experience, which non-tackle players almost never get, according to the team’s other coach, Rachel Karos.
Karos said football games are the biggest social event and most popular sports matches at Willowbrook.
Willowbrook’s varsity homecoming football game is usually preceded by a boys sophomore game. But last year, Karos said it was a girls flag football match-up.
“There’s a picture of the girls in front of the crowd after the game, and the bleachers are mostly full,” Karos said. “That’s an opportunity only one group really ever gets.”
Email: a.singh@dailynorthwestern.com
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