Members of the Pirates’ defense pose for a photo between plays during a scrimmage against Cary High School. The Pirates beat the Cary Imps 15-8.
By Jaida Cooper Parrish & Aureli Dominguez
Nobody takes Powderpuff more seriously than Riverside students.
Every year each team is decked out in body paint and matching t-shirts that each person participating made into their own. T-shirts would be ripped, cropped, fringed, or even have names written on the back with a sharpie.
But, the game’s intensity is what drew us and many girls into the game of football. After several years of only playing football once a year, this fall we got the opportunity to play for a whole season on the newly inaugurated Riverside Flag Football Team.
Although most of our team was still in season with other fall sports, they still made time to come to practices and games, to show up for the rest of the team and help us come together to learn a sport that was very new to a lot of us. Flag Football is a mental game. You have to use a lot of thinking and rely on your teammates a lot. Flag Football gives us and other women a chance to play a sport that has been exclusively male for a long time. It’s a way to express ourselves.
The other girls on our team aren’t just our teammates. As sisters, we lose, fight, win, and celebrate. Whether we lose a game we could’ve won, or we come back from being down 12-0 to win the game by one point, we’re all in it together.
We finished the season 5-5, with a total of 99 points scored. Now, our focus is encouraging more people to either join the team or get involved in the sport next year.
Start by watching, because, win or lose, it’s an amazing game and you can learn how the offense and defense line up, running, passing and blocking schemes and scoring strategies just by observing. Most importantly, you’ll learn what a true team is. Because in flag, everyone has to play a role to get to the end zone.
