Bears host second annual girls flag football jamboree

Juliana Zavala glanced around at the Englewood STEM High School campus Aug. 27 and felt chills run through her body. Zavala, the senior manager of elementary sports for Chicago Public Schools, saw hundreds of teenage girls sitting on the football field, dressed in Nike uniforms, cleats and helmets, with a belt of flags fastened around their waists.

Zavala watched from the sidelines as Gustavo Silva, Bears manager of youth football and community programs, introduced the second annual High School Girls Flag Football Jamboree. As Zavala saw the 40-plus teams break into scrimmages and drills held by USA Football, she felt proud.

Four years ago, Silva brought the idea of creating a girls flag football league in Illinois to Zavala. In 2021, 22 high schools in the Chicago Public School district competed in the inaugural season. In just a year, the league has expanded to 50 CPS teams while bringing in six schools from the Western Suburban Conference and eight teams from the Rockford area.

“Being a part of this, it just makes me so happy,” Zavala said. “I can’t even say it in words. It just makes me so happy. Today just being here, seeing these faces, hearing the whistles. I mean, some of these girls have never pulled the flag before, put cleats on before. And they’re just coming out saying thank you to me, and I tell them like, ‘No, thank you for giving us the opportunity to show you a new sport.'”

On the date of the event – just a day after Women’s Equality Day — the girls who attended the jamboree heard from two women who have changed the game for girls in football: Zavala, the woman who made this opportunity possible; and Dr. Jen Welter, the first female coach in NFL history.

Welter delivered an inspiring speech at the event, motivating the girls to accept any challenge the sport brings and continue pursuing the game of football. Welter discussed becoming the linebackers coach for the Arizona Cardinals in 2015 and how difficult yet rewarding it was to be the first woman to do so.

But Welter also emphasized that these girls won’t have their dreams limited like she did. Girls can now look around at a football field and see players, coaches and officials who look just like them.

That’s why advocating for this program is so crucial. Welter sees how Zavala is changing the landscape for girls and women in football through opportunity.

“I’m telling you what, the amount of lives that are being touched right now in this program should set the standard for the rest of the country on one, it doesn’t have to be a 10-year plan,” Welter said. “It can be action right now. And two, just how important it is to basically think of that ‘Field of Dreams’ and know that build it and they will come, because thinking that girls don’t want to play is incorrect. Girls have never had the opportunity to make up their own minds in a situation that was supported to play. It was so often that they were the exception to the rule, and they were playing someone else’s games by their rules. You were the one of one. I’ve been the one of one. Being the exception to those rules is tough. Yet this is not.

“This is their game doing it with support, in big venues and having the backing of the Chicago Bears. This means you’re not an outsider, we’re creating something for you, where you don’t have to feel wrong for feeling different or loving football, where you see that this game is right for you, and you get to make those decisions. So, to me, this is everything.”