Gridiron girls: New teen football league welcomed by female players

Monday, Aug. 27, 2001 | 8:28 a.m.

With an icepack pushed against her forehead, 14-year-old Faun Ginac sat on the edge of a lawn chair on the grassy sideline hollering to her coach that she was ready to get back into the game.

Taking her on her word, Dolphins coach Preston Clipper motioned her onto the field at Thurman White Middle School in Henderson, where her flag football team played the 49ers in the first season of the Henderson branch of the National Football League's Flag football league for girls.

Her ponytail splashing behind her, Ginac maneuvered confidently between the other players on a recent Saturday evening, giving little hint that this was her first attempt at league sports of any kind.

This is just the ambition Dave Marsili was hoping for when he began a campaign in July to start the girls' flag league just three weeks prior to the beginning of the league's season.

Marsili founded the local coed league for NFL Flag, a national youth football program, four years ago for children ages 6-14.

At the encouragement of NFL Flag, he pulled together 35 girls to play in the league that began this year.

Fliers about the league were sent home from Henderson-area schools; players were registered at the Galleria at Sunset mall; and news was spread through word of mouth by coed team members.

"We really pushed," Clipper said, explaining that he would stop girls in area malls and ask them if they wanted to play flag football.

"A girl would come to cheerlead (at the flag football games) and we'd say, 'Why don't you play?'"

For some of the girls, the opportunity to play in a flag football league was a long time in coming. Ginac, for example, had been throwing a football around for years with friends in the streets and their backyards -- even playing a little flag football at school during physical education class.

When she heard that a league for girls was beginning, she jumped at the opportunity to join.

"This is the only sport I'm good at," Ginac said, explaining during a halftime break why she passed up opportunities to play other league sports.

Girls got game

Nationwide, girls are stepping forward to play flag football.

Since it was founded in 1996, NFL Flag has grown to include more than 300,000 participants in its 900 leagues nationwide. A third of those players are girls, said Steve Alic, an NFL spokesman.

The turnout hasn't surprised NFL Flag organizers, who began the league in response to the popularity of the annual NFL Gatorade Punt, Pass and Kick competition, a national competition for children ages 8-15.

Last year 3.5 million youth participated in the event, Alic said, noting that 1.3 million of the participants were girls.

Marsili said he expects the NFL Flag girls' league to grow. Since inception, membership for the coed program has doubled. Between the coed, boys and girls leagues, there are 72 teams.

Some of the players in the girls' league are new to the game, never having thrown a football, Marsili said. Others play soccer and have played boys' baseball and wanted to try something new, he said. Some switched to the girls' team from the coed division.

"To tell you the truth," Marsili said, "there are some girls who wanted to stay with the boys."

The stats

There are four teams -- Dolphins, 49ers, Titans and Pirates -- and games are played in a five-on-five version of traditional flag football.

The players, ages 12-14, meet twice weekly for practice and play one game per week until tournaments begin in November.

The appeal of flag football is that children can learn the game without the threat of being tackled, Marsili said.

"It's mostly a passing game," he said. "You learn all the skills without catching a ball with the fear of getting leveled.

"We're not highly competitive. We're geared for fun. We do keep score. We do have trophies."

Twelve-year-old Dolphins receiver Brianna Clipper -- one of Preston Clipper's two daughters who play in the league -- prefers football to soccer because there is less running involved.

She said that she learned to catch a football when she was 3 years old, and has been passing and receiving ever since. She follows the NFL season on television, is a big fan of the Oakland Raiders and plans to keep playing flag football and soccer.

Fourteen-year-old Elisabeth Gotzmer, a quarterback for the Patriots, played last year on the Henderson NFL Flag coed league's Raiders and crossed over into the girls' league this year.

She and her friend, Jenny Howe, were the only two girls on the Raiders. Gotzmer said she had mixed feelings about joining the new league.

"I kind of wanted to play with the girls," Gotzmer said. "But I liked the team that I was on."

But she said at times it was pretty rough. "Guys talk a lot of smack," Gotzmer said.

But her former male teammates have supported her.

"I'm surprized how supportive the boys from last year are," Marsha Gotzmer, Elisabeth's mother, said, explaining that the boys will stop by the field to watch Elisabeth play. "They'll check out how she's doing."

Marsili said Elisabeth Gotzmer represents the superb athleticism some of the girls are demonstrating. Gotzmer won the local Punt, Pass & Kick competition last year and competed in the regional competition in San Diego.

She has been playing neighborhood football with her younger brothers and friends for years.

"I love football," Gotzmer said. "It's my favorite sport."

Football fever

Because she is 14, this will be Gotzmer's last year playing in an NFL Flag league. Players who want to continue playing football have few options outside of high school tackle football.

Gotzmer has played boys' baseball and soccer, and is beginning golf this year, but says she's not interested in high school tackle football.

But some girls are.

According to the National Federation of State High School Associations, in Indiana more than 650 girls played high-school tackle football during the 1999-2000 school year -- more than double the number of girls who played during 1994-95.

Eligible girls, ages 15 and up, do have the option of playing on a flag-football league sponsored by the Clark County Parks and Recreation Department. Although it is a men's league, eligible women are welcome to play -- and have played, according to Mike Krauss, recreation program administer for the department.

"We'd like to see more women come out and play," Krauss said. "I could form an all-women's league (or an official coed) league if there was enough interest. I'd like to."

The NFL Flag girls' league is still seeking players and girls can join the teams through the end of October. Experience isn't required.

The local trophy tournament will be held Nov. 3. Also that month the regional NFL Flag tournament will be held in Southern Nevada. The location has not been confirmed, but teams from Nevada, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico will compete.

Winners of the regional tournament will be treated to a free trip to Disney World in Orlando, Fla., later that month, to participate in national championships, which will be televised on ESPN.

Also, the Henderson NFL Flag program will sponsor the NFL Gatorade Punt Pass & Kick on Sept. 22 at Harriet Treem Elementary School. (Children ages 8-14 are eligible to participate in the free event.)

Meanwhile Marsili is looking forward to the continued growth of the league.

"This whole program is spreading nationwide," he said. "It's gonna become like Little League."

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