Colton, CA—This year Colton High has a new athletic club hoping to establish itself as a new sport: flag football.

Back in February, CIF announced that flag football for girls is now an official sport. Schools across California began working to put together teams for competition for the current fall season.

The Colton Joint Unified School District began working with its high schools to establish clubs to determine if flag football was a sport in which students wanted to compete.

With that, currently Colton High is the only high school in the district with a flag football club. The club practices on Mondays, led by head coach Chad Hackworth and assistant coach Karen Terry.

Senior Jasmine Jimenez said, “It’s more of a fun thing to do [for me]. I have basketball, but the practice days [are] Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Wednesdays.”

“It is just something to do to keep me busy [but] I love flag football,” Jimenez added. 

They hope to get more girls participating so they can compete against each other in practice. 

The flag football team is struggling to get a consistent group of girls to come out to practice every week, shared coach Terry. “One week we may have three girls come out to practice and one week we might have seven girls show up.”

Their practices consist of running, catching, and throwing drills. 

They also run drills practicing pulling the offensive players’ flag, which are similar to tackling drills in traditional football.

No games are scheduled for this season Coach Terry said the girls’ flag football team is looking for games that they want to play, but as of right now, the team has no games scheduled for this season.

For students interested in participating in this fun new sport at CHS, see either coach Hackworth in room 572 or coach Terry in room 74. Practices are after school every Monday starting at 4 p.m.