Willowbrook flag football paving the way for female athletics
VILLA PARK, Ill. (BVM) – The Willowbrook Warriors girls flag football team is playing for a national championship as a part of the NFL’s Pro Bowl weekend. In their first year of existence, the Warriors have gone undefeated, won a conference championship, won the first ever Illinois state championship and won regionals in Ohio.
“We’ve been practicing flag since June, nothing in July, we started the season in August and there hasn’t been a true stop to it yet,” co-head coach Nick Hildreth said. “It’s just been a total blur.”
Rachel Karos, a teacher and softball coach at Willowbrook, learned about the opportunity to start a flag football team last year. The league was originally started in 2021 by Chicago Public Schools in conjunction with the Chicago Bears and the NFL. Last spring, the league was looking to expand and Karos wanted Willowbrook to join. She plays flag football herself and knew it would be a great addition at Willowbrook.
“To a lot of girls their experience with flag football has been at the powder puff level,” Karos said. “It’s always so popular because girls want to play football. The initiative that the NFL is taking to push this out for female athletics is really huge and I think has been really, really successful.”
Around the same time, Hildreth learned about the opportunity during a chalk talk with the Chicago Bears. Bears Manager of Youth Football & Community Programs Gustavo Silva was there talking about the league. The two had support from the administration from the beginning as well as Nike and the Chicago Bears.
Karos and Hildreth presented the idea of starting a flag football program to a group of about 30 girls.
“I wasn’t sure if I was going to do it honestly,” senior wide receiver Sarah Ball said. “I didn’t really know if that was going to be a good fit for me but I knew that growing up I always wanted to play flag football, just football in general, but never really had the opportunity to.”
Ball decided to go to the camp Karos and Hildreth were hosting and like many other girls who went to the camp, she fell in love with the sport.
“When they started the camp in the summer I fell in love with it,” Ball said. “I got to meet so many amazing girls and learn the sport with them. Which is an experience I hadn’t had because all the sports I played I started at a young age.”
That was a sentiment shared by everyone. Learning together bonded them together, the girls had never played before and even the coaches were starting something new. They were building a program from the ground up and all of them, together, were creating the foundation.
“We both agree this has been one of our, if not the best, coaching accomplishments in that we got to start something completely new,” Karos said.
“By far the most enjoyable athletic experience,” Hildreth said.
Both coaches have been successful in the other sports they have coached but those programs were there long before them. They tweaked it to fit the culture they wanted or their vision of how to run the program but this flag football team was brand new.
They all learned together and learned quickly. This was a competitive group of girls who had had success in other sports. That competitiveness transferred to flag. Even though the coaches focused on fun and development, the girls opened the season with a win.
“Once we started playing games I think it was kind of evident we were going to fight for every game,” Ball said
The Warriors won and they won a lot. Ball was even featured on NFL Network by Brian Baldinger for a play she made in September and that same play also got the attention of Bears wide receiver Darnell Mooney.
Let’s watch Sarah Ball playing some serious flag football in Illinois. Every #NFL wide receiver can learn fundamentals from Sarah in this clip #BaldysBreakdowns pic.twitter.com/drprHlT7Et
— Brian Baldinger (@BaldyNFL) September 22, 2022
“It’s not everyday you get to see one of your receivers getting retweeted by Darnell Mooney or on NFL Network,” Karos said.
That was the flashiest and most viral of the support given to the Warriors but there has been a lot of support from all over. The Bears have been involved from the beginning and Silva has even visited Willowbrook practices. Nike provided gear for all the teams in the league. Within the community, a local bar not only live streamed the state tournament for fans to watch, but also hosted a fundraiser to raise money to start a feeder program for young girls.
“Seeing all the support that we had from men in football and from just the community around us and the NFL program in general was amazing,” Ball said.
The support has been a huge bonus and it has helped increase the growth of the game but these girls would love it with or without the support. They all fell in love with it from the beginning. They have fun at practice, at the games and have quickly become students of the game of football.
“Their buy-in to the sport itself has been really cool to see it evolve,” Hildreth said. “I mean we ended our 7s season with like two coverages defensively and we’re running like eight now.”
Ball and her teammates watch football now with more of an appreciation for the sport. They pay attention to how players and teams operate and try to add it to their own game. Ball focuses on wide receivers and the routes they run.
They’re all students of the game and now life-long fans of football and flag football. Passing that love and understanding onto the next generation.
“I think it’s important for younger girls to see girls represented in sports and in football, something that I never saw growing up,” Ball said.
Girls look up to the Warriors and want to emulate them. Flag football is growing throughout the country thanks to teams like the Willowbrook Warriors. Whether they win a national title or not, Willowbrook flag football has made a lasting mark on the community. They might be the first but they won’t be the last.
“It just seems like an exciting time for female athletics right now and I do feel like this has been a major part of that,” Karos said.
