Flag football season preview

Northview’s Flag Football team plans to build on the strategies that led to key victories last year

Gavin Chen, Special

Carter Willis, Sports Editor & Neha Gurram, Staff Writer

Going into their third season, the girls’ flag football team has many goals set to improve. Although most of the teams’ games are away, they have been consistent in keeping the momentum that almost got them to the state finals last year. The team is keen on keeping a consistent performance despite the star seniors already having graduated.

“Last year the seniors were so awesome, and I feel like I have to live up to that, and that’s what I’m really pushing for this year,” senior, flag football player Lillian Pendergrass said.

The new team also has new players to take the places of the seniors who graduated. This year the team has four freshmen who have a variety of skills to bring to the team, but it can take time to gain the rhythm and teamwork a successful team needs. Despite this, the new senior players are confident in the new players.

“We have some really strong players, who I think will be able to serve as good players this year. I think that there’s a lot of potential to see people grow which I’m really excited about,” Pendergrass said. “It should be pretty promising if we’re willing to work hard.”

Flag football is a personal, contact-driven sport, where the girls have to block and run at fast paces to pull off the flags attached to a waist belt and gain possession of the ball, which makes minor and major injuries a commonality in the sport. Some include ankle injuries, turf burn, and finger jamming when catching the ball. To help with this, the team brought on former player Rachel Wesley to be the first student trainer.

“I played flag football last year and the year before, so I wanted to play this year too, but I didn’t really have that much time to dedicate to playing, so I asked Rawlin and he said trainer would be fine,” Wesley said. “As a trainer, I go to the practices and the games, and any minor injuries that happen to the players, I ice and bandage them.”

This season, the team is focusing on reconstructing the team dynamic and mindset of the players. The team’s new seniors are honing in on fostering more excitement within the team, changing the “Northview mindset” (placing importance on academics rather than sports) that is instilled within some of the players, making them excited to come to practices rather than considering flag football as just an extracurricular, and creating more team-building activities to generate friendship within the team.

“Some of our teammates are thinking of ways to get the team really hyped up and excited because I think that when you’re really excited and you’re happy, that’s when you’re going to perform your best,” Pendergrass said.

Last year, the team finished the season with four wins and nine losses. The team hopes to build off of key wins from last year, such as their win against Johns Creek High School, in order to execute to the performance level that they know they are capable of. To ensure that the team builds off of wins, they plan to continue the strategies that aided them in their four wins last year, such as watching game films.

“Last year we watched videos, if [our opponents] had videos,” senior Alexis Joyner said. “So we were able to tell if [our opponent] was good or not, and then we planned around them to match our own positioning accordingly.”

Getting an early jump on strategies, like watching game films, will give them an advantage over their opponents this year. Last year was the second year of the program, however, the team switched head coaches from Tom Kratowicz, who left to coach baseball at West Forsyth High School, to Brian Rawlin, and the team had a number of new players join the team.

“At the beginning of last year, we were all right,” Joyner said. “But by the end, we improved a lot. We were able to beat teams that we were originally not able to beat. For example, we lost to a JV team and then later in the season, we won against their varsity team. That really showed how much we improved.”

Now that there is more continuity in the program with Rawlin returning as head coach for his second season, the general belief in the program is that consistency in coaching and strategy will result in the consistency of a winning team. Rather than originally losing to a JV team this year and then improving to beat a varsity team, the Northview team will go in ready to beat every varsity team they face. To prepare for this, the team had practice last spring and plans to start up practices on Sept. 18.

“Once practices start up I’ll be chugging Celsius and energy drinks to carry this team, especially for the people who have not played before,” Pendergrass said. “A big part [of our improvement] will be getting into the best mental state to be in our best physical shape.”

There is no doubt in the minds of Pendergrass, Joyner, Wesley, and the rest of the team that they have the potential to achieve all of the goals that they set. Their hard work is being put in and strategies are in full form; all that is left now is to execute.