SAN JOSE, CALIF. — This school year at Silver Creek, girls flag football is facing many obstacles such as not being in a league, nowhere to practice and slow shipment.

This is the first year Silver Creek is offering girls flag football and it shows. The school is not as prepared to support this new program as they should be. So what is going on with flag football?

One of the big things that these girls have to deal with is not being in an official league. This means that the flag football team isn’t being scheduled into weekly games against other schools. Fortunately, the girls’ coach, Rolly Vital, also known as Coach Rolly, has contacted other flag football coaches and have made arrangements to play against them. Vital scheduled the girls eight games so far but that’s barely half of the games that league teams are playing. Other teams in the league have 18 games so Silver Creek is really playing a game of catch up.

Silver Creek was supposed to order in jerseys for the girls but they still haven’t arrived yet. Without jerseys, the girls can’t play against other schools. In the meantime, Vital was generous enough to use his own funds for his team and buy jerseys for everyone. The team held a fundraiser to raise money for what Vital had spent and reached their goal.

Boys football practices are at the same time as girls which poses big problems. Boys have first dibs on the field. The only time the girls get to play on the field is after the boys finish practice which is after seven. This would cut into their out of school time as they will be practicing as late as 9 p.m. They have only practiced on the field twice. The girls have to practice on the softball field which is problematic because of the spacing. The junior varsity’s freshman wide receiver and cornerback, Simardeep Sidhu says, “The softball field is hard to practice on due to the size and holes. A lot of us have also ended up injuring ourselves.” They have been told that they were going to have lines painted but that promise has not been fulfilled yet. This makes the real game harder because of confusion on alignment. 

Although there are many hurdles in flag football there are some positives. For example, these girls are pioneering the way for future generations of female flag football players at creek. With this new sport program, Silver Creek has equal opportunities for girls to join sports as boys do. One of the sophomore players, Amira Dyer even said herself that, “I like flag football because it shows that girls can do anything boys can do.”