As girls flag football season reaches its midpoint, excitement is building up on and off the field, a specific player that stands out. Monique Martinez who’s become a star player for the team demonstrating fast agility and athletic hard work encouraging her teammates to become the best they can, recently getting injured and trying to push through the season to help her team out. Monique has become a driving force for the team propelling them to impressive victories with the coaching having high standards in her plays.

Martinez, a senior at Silver Creek High, has been playing flag football for a year,. Martinez decided to play this sport for fun and play with my close friends who she describes as motivators, the main people who got her into girls flag football. Martinez being very athletic, most notably known for playing basketball. Her agility training in basketball has really helped in football being very explosive once the whistle is blown. 

How Martinez impacts her team is by elevating her teammates’ performances. Martinez agility, speed and fast thinking has led to numerous touchdowns and key defensive plays. Coaches and teammates alike praise Martinez. When asking Martinez how she does it, she said, “I’ve been working hard but the coaches expectations are high for me which does bother me a bit, I been struggling with a lot of homework and school work but I have fun playing with my friends and just play the sport for fun, I never plan on taking it seriously so I hope my expectations are just to have fun.” Another question we asked was how does your coaches high expectations affect you. She said “I don’t really enjoy it I’ve been sore and been wanting to take a break from everything just to relax my body, we have a upcoming game and I am going to play in it so my I can be there with my friends and teammates. Monique plans on finishing her season strong and hope to lead her team to more wins then loses.  

Martinez speaks out on her teams struggle and says, “my team needs to be more active and sprint and need to practice catching even myself, we are still learning and just having fun.” Girls flag football faces many struggles as well when it comes to playing their sport. The football team takes the football field from Tuesday through Friday leaving Monday the only day available for them to play on the field. They conquered their struggles from their coach suggesting to play on the softball field. The softball team runs their drills and plays on the softball team and are hoping many more join the sport over-time.