Girls flag football is off and running: Bethel youth seize state's newest high school sport

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May 20—If there's one thing that Haywood County loves, it's football. And there could soon be even more of it.

The North Carolina High School Athletic Association recently voted to sanction girls' flag football as an official high school sport.

Currently, neither Pisgah nor Tuscola has a flag football team. But girls' flag football has taken root in Haywood County through the Bethel Youth Football league.

Bethel Youth Football just wrapped up its spring season of flag football. In addition to its normal offerings of boys' flag football teams, the youth sports organization offered three different age groups for girls for the first time.

"It's actually been really exciting just because we're the first Bethel team for the girls," said Brianna Rathbone, who played for the Bethel midget team.

While there aren't any local high school teams yet, there is plenty of interest at the youth level. Erin Ballew, who coached the midgets team, said three girls come to her during the season and asked if they'd be able to continue playing the sport.

"I feel like there's a lot of girls with an interest in it, so I'm glad it's a new avenue," Ballew said.

For midgets coach Jacob Hannah, it's been a blast coaching one of the younger teams — especially when compared to coaching teenagers at Pisgah.

"It's happy and fun, and they want to take my hat off and rub my bald head and rub my beard and ask when the game's over so they can get ice cream. But the cool thing is they want the ball," Hannah said. "They want to ask questions on how to do this and do that and get better."

That goes two ways. The coaches are starting with a blank slate in terms of football knowledge.

"It's like starting brand new. It's catching and throwing and learning what the line of scrimmage is and learning what a wide receiver is. That has been a very big learning curve, but it's been good," Ballew said.

But even in just a short season, there have already been big leaps in the players' abilities.

"It's been cool these four weeks to watch them progress. A couple of girls made jump cuts and stuff that we had worked on in practice. It was really cool to see that," Hannah said. "I was out there celebrating. It's really cool when you see the little ones out here smiling."

He was coaching his daughter Carter's team, who were just as excited about playing football as anyone who was on the field on Friday.

"We put her in everything," Hannah said. "This is the first sport I've seen her gravitate to, and it might be because of Dad and her brother, because we do it daily. But she was so excited when I told her. She was like, 'Holy cow, I'm gonna get to do this.'"

Carter said her favorite position to play was safety, but she really loved just being out on the field.

"Being with my friends and family and having fun," Carter Hannah said about her favorite part of playing football.

And the youth players are already getting excited about the possibility of playing in high school one day.

"It's pretty cool because I like this a lot," said Bailey Huston, who also played on the midget team.

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