Girls on the gridiron: Uniontown forms flag football team with help of Steelers
Submitted photo
Are you ready for girls on the gridiron?
There’s a new high school sport in Fayette County and it took a big step to becoming sanctioned by the PIAA.
Girls flag football is already here although there’s currently only one team in town and that’s at Uniontown High School thanks in large part to athletic director Harry Kaufman.
“I held a meeting in the school to see the interest,” Kaufman said. “We had over 25 girls come out. They wanted to participate. They did a great job of organizing and getting together. We set up some practices and they really bought into the idea.
“I think the community and the school embraced this. It was a really awesome thing for everybody to see and be a part.”
The PIAA board of directors unanimously approved to sanction girls flag football as a sport in May.
NFL football teams are sponsoring teams, including the Pittsburgh Steelers.
“Right now the (Philadelphia) Eagles run the east side of the state and the Steelers run the west side,” Kaufman said, as far as helping out high school teams get started. “To get a PIAA sport you need 100 schools and they have that now and petitioned for it.
“Essentially it was funded through the Steelers. I jumped on it with the help of Joe Hazel, who’s our middle school football coach and also now our flag football coach.
“I helped get it off the ground and running. The Steelers were great helping out. They provided us with footballs, agility training equipment, jerseys.”
The Steelers also provided such items as pylons, midfield cones, equipment bags, stopwatches, scrimmage pennies, flag belts and footballs.
Uniontown held a flag football event last month.
“It was down here (at Bill Power Stadium) when we hosted on a Sunday and had probably 300 people at the event,” Kaufman said. “Every week a school hosts and there’s a north, south, west and east division. There are eight schools in each division. You play on half the field, go across sideline to sideline, so you play two games at a time. They have officials, scoring, they have everything.
“Four teams play at 1 p.m. to 2, then another four teams come in and play 3 to 4.”
Uniontown only played one game that day due to a forfeit.
“We beat Belle Vernon 36-0,” Kaufman said. :”The team finished with a 5-5 record for the first year they did it. We’re drawing from other sports. We had a lot of softball girls participate and track girls.
“It’s a neat thing to accomplish within the district.”
Flag football likely will be a WPIAL spring sport as it is now.
“They talked about the fall but it’s tough then because of volleyball, soccer, it’s pretty hard to get field time,” Kaufman said. “But the spring is the best time because the baseball and softball teams are off the football field.
“Obviously most of these girls are multi-sport athletes and Joe had to set practice to work around their schedules. But the girls wanted to accomplish this. At the end of the day, without the support of them wanting to do it, we don’t know if this would’ve happened. We’re very fortunate we have kids in the building who really wanted to get this moving and going.”
Kaufman is hoping other schools in the area will follow Uniontown’s lead.
“We’re the only school in the area doing this right now,” Kaufman said. “Belle Vernon is the closest school to have a team but no one else in the county does. I’m hoping to reach out to the other schools in Fayette and Greene County and even Washington County to get this going since it’s becoming so popular and trending into a PIAA sport.
“We would like to see as much participation as we can. It’s a great thing.”