On January 15, a crowd filled up Golden Eagle Stadium to witness Ferndale history: the first-ever high school flag football game in Whatcom County. Fans didn’t have to wait long for some excitement: Freshman Kensley Beach caught a difficult contested catch for over 20 yards on the very first play.

Just a few minutes later, junior Annaleigh Adams thew the first flag football touchdown in Golden Eagles history to freshman Hadley Pike.

“I was scared, because I thought I didn’t catch it at first,” Pike said on the sideline after her touchdown. “But it felt good!”

This winter, Ferndale High School and Bellingham’s three high schools launched flag football teams, joining a number of schools from the Puget Sound area. The four Whatcom schools received $4,000 each from the Seattle Seahawks to pay for uniforms, equipment, and startup costs. The eventual goal is to make flag football a full, state-sanctioned sport – and potentially create some local Olympians.

“This is one of the fastest-growing sports, it’s going to be in the Olympics,” said coach Jackie Kolesar. “We want to make sure we give these kids the same opportunities that other schools have.”

There were 23 students on the team, with the vast majority being freshmen and sophomores. Coach Donny Hennigs said this is a perk, because these younger students will stick around for a few years and build a longstanding culture for the sport in Ferndale.

Many of the flag footballers already play other sports, but don’t have a winter activity – such as junior Ocean McPherson who plays softball, or sophomore Katie Garner who plays soccer.

“I wanted to add another extracurricular, and I thought flag football would be a nice thing to do,” McPherson said.

Sophomore Audrey Kallin said her favorite part of flag football is scoring touchdowns – “I’ve got a few of them” – and was impressed by how excited her classmates were for the new sport.

“There were a surprising amount of girls that came to the first meeting,” she said. “I think it was pretty easy to get a bunch of students together.”

The coaches were also impressed by the team’s drive for success and their ability to quickly learn a brand-new sport.

“The growth from day one to where we are now has been phenomenal,” Hennigs said. “The girls got competitive, and we feed off of them. They bring the energy every day.”

“I think all three of us were like, ‘This is going to be a less competitive thing compared to what we coach outside of this sport,’” added fellow coach Brittany Arredondo. “But we definitely dialed it up – the adrenaline and beauty of the sport gets us hyped.”

Although some of the students said they already knew the basics of football before joining the team, some of flag football’s idiosyncrasies and changes took a little bit of time to get used to. Of course, flag football has no contact, unlike traditional tackle football, and a player is marked “down” when one of the flags on their belt is pulled off. There are some other major rule changes in flag – quarterbacks have seven seconds to pass the ball and can’t scramble past the line of scrimmage. A maximum of two defenders can rush the quarterback at a time, and offensive players can’t block them. Instead of a 100-yard field, the players have to cross 70 yards to score a touchdown. And there’s no extra-point kicks – teams can opt for a one- or two-point conversion from the 5- or 10-yard-line, respectively.

“You kind of had an idea of how to play, but the rules were really confusing at first,” said Adams, the sophomore quarterback.

Both the coaches and players said they had a blast trying this new sport.

“This is my first time coaching a girls’ team, and it’s been awesome,” said Hennigs (who also coaches tackle football and baseball for the Golden Eagles). “I’ve learned a lot.”

“I definitely feel like I’ll do this again next year, and I can’t wait until next season,” said McPherson. “I wish we had more games!”