Raising the flag – E.A. Sports Today

Oxford to start practice for girls flag football next week, playing in a couple more; ‘it’s not powder puff’

By Al Muskewitz
East Alabama Sports Today

OXFORD – Sam Adams’ boys of fall won’t be the only football team taking up residence in Lamar Field this year.

Oxford hashed out the final details for a girls flag football team Tuesday night and likely start playing games in a couple weeks.

More than 60 players turned out for Tuesday’s meeting. They will start tryouts and practicing next week.

“We’re excited about it,” Oxford athletics director Larry Davidson said. “I think it’ll be another good avenue (of involvement) for our girls.

“I told the girls this is not powder puff. This is flag football and part of the athletic program and we want to handle it like we do all our other athletes. We want to be the best we can be at it.”

Yellow Jackets baseball coach Wes Brooks will be the team’s head coach, with Jake Hammond and Kathleen Ragains serving as assistants.

“We had a meeting the other night and I wish I had taken a picture; you never know,” said Brooks, who noted his wife was a female intramural athlete of the year at JSU playing quarterback and suggested back in May he coach this new team.

“The first baseball team at Oxford was in 1961,” he continued, extending the idea of the picture. “They probably thought back then oh well, we’ll probably play for a year or two and that’ll be the end of it. I don’t know that, just saying what they may have thought. Well, our first practice is Tuesday and I’m going to get a big picture. I’m excited.”

The next piece of business is putting together a schedule. Davidson is hoping to schedule a minimum of six games “and hopefully 10.”

“We want to put together a competitive schedule like we do in all our other sports,” Davidson said.

Fifty-seven schools have declared with the AHSAA to play the 7-on-7 sport with the heaviest concentration in metro Birmingham and Tuscaloosa. Anniston also has declared its intention to play.

The season will conclude with a one-classification championship game at Protective Stadium in Birmingham the Wednesday of the Super 7.

“I think it’s going to be one of those sports that’s going to blossom,” AHSAA executive director Alvin Briggs said Tuesday. “We’re in a football-crazy state.”

Much of the Lady Jackets’ flag football schedule will be dependent upon what else is going on at the school.

“We don’t want them to miss an opportunity because of one sport,” Davidson said. “We’re going to make it work. If you’re a cheerleader, a volleyball player, we’re going to make it where you can do both. We don’t want them to miss any of their spots, but we want to give them an opportunity to play.”