John Coffelt, Editor

The Coffee County Board of Education recently greenlighted an inaugural Coffee County Central High School girls flag football team that could begin playing as early as mid-January.

 Assistant Football Coach Bobby Butler said that when he came to CCCHS from LaVergne High School, he brought with him a sense of excitement about the sport.

“I think it’s a great sport,” Butler said. “It’s growing so fast. I think that every school in Tennessee should have it.”

Some of the key differences, aside from the tackles in football, are that flag football only has seven players on each side, and every player is eligible to receive a pass. 

“The rule book is much, much smaller,” Butler said. “For example, in tackle football there’s rules about how many people have to be on the line of scrimmage. With flag, that’s not the case. The only person who has to be on the line of scrimmage is the center.”

In fact, after the center snaps the ball, she could receive a pass.

Butler said the pace is 100% higher pace than tackle football, with a lot of running.

“That was something I learned last year, my first game,” he said. “And my girls learned pretty quickly… because of the way scheduling worked we didn’t get a scrimmage. We jumped right into the season, and they had to learn on the fly.”

One of the big misconceptions about the game, according to Butler, is that there is no contact among players.

“I tell people there is no intentional contact, but if you have bodies going around, momentum is going to carry you,” he said.

One time last season, the LaVergne quarterback took an incidental head butt.

“She came over crying a little bit,” Butler recalled. “I said there’s no crying right now. You can cry after the game, but right now you have a game to go win.”

LaVergne emerged from their inaugural season with a District Record: 5-3, ranked 10^th in the state.

Last year there were over 150 schools in Tennessee that participated in flag football. The Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association (TSSAA) officially sanctioned girls’ flag football as a varsity sport, with the first full season kicking off in spring 2025.

CCCHS will not be one of the schools participating in the TSSAA program. This year the School Board gave provisional club team approval to see how the season goes. 

As a club team, CCCHS will not have the guaranteed games and potentially a run to the playoffs that a TSSAA team would have. Also, the team will have no budget. All funds will have to be self-raised.   

Students at CCCHS have shown strong interest in the program. Just shy of 200 girls responded to an email interest survey, and then 60-70 showed up for an interest meeting. The first parent meeting was held last week.

However, as a club team, the coaches aren’t bound by TSSAA rules about practice schedule. 

Normally, the team would have begun pre-season practices beginning with the return from Thanksgiving break. Due to the delay, the first practice will be Jan. 9 with games beginning in early spring.   

An immerging yet very popular sport, girls flag football has huge potential for players to receive college scholarships, according to Butler.

“Last year, in the first year of it being an experimental sport in Tennessee, two of my senior girls, my quarterback and wide receiver, got full-ride scholarships to play flag football at university, where they are playing now and having a blast,” Butler said.

He said that a sport like basketball will have five or six scholarships available year to year.

“The flag football roster is big and as a new sport, a lot of these sports have like (an estimated) 40 scholarships to give out,” Butler said.

“Even if you don’t have years and years of playing flag football, if you’re an athlete, you can learn flag football. That’s what they are looking for.”

At the national college level, UCLA, California Berkley and Arizona State have announced that they are getting flag football at club level to eventually move up to an NCAA sport.

“Once that happens,” Butler said. “It’s off to the races – D-1 schools, the money involved and the money that can be gained with how fast it’s growing. And with the Olympics coming all eyes are on flag football.”

John has been with the Manchester Times since May 2011. John has won Tennessee Press Association awards for Best News Photo and placed in numerous other categories. John is a 1994 graduate of Tullahoma High School, a graduate of Motlow State Community College and earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from Middle Tennessee State University. He lives in Tullahoma, enjoys painting, dancing and exploring the outdoors.