Why we exist

Why start a new flag football league? The goals are simple:

Player Experience. The single most important element of any youth organization is to provide a great experience to our children, and for sports, that means a safe but challenging environment where they can develop new skills, improve on old ones, learn what they are capable of, and get some real experience with the joy of winning as well as the ability to tolerate and learn from losses. Every aspect of the experience that can be improved on to deliver those experiences is worth considering. Kids are only young once — let's make it count.

Parent Experience. Parents are busy, and everyone has unique challenges: multiple kids, multiple sports, often both simultaneously; demanding careers, packed social calendars, family travel. People have a lot going on. Particularly with the rise of "travel" sports, having to budget time to drive out of town is a logistical headache, and that compounds when events are in different cities, forcing choices. Predictability of schedule makes things easy to plan, and if events can be reliably planned and conveniently accessed, people are more likely to participate. Simple.

Technology & Communication. Predictability of schedule solves the need for most communication, and coaches already own the responsibility for organizing their team and players, but any changes to the schedule can be made much easier with a well-organized league. We are also in the middle of a major revolution in what technology is capable of doing, to the point where a well-organized league can find creative ways to leverage technology to improve the coaching, parent, and player experience. The capabilities available to the average person are so remarkable it's almost an imperative to see what can be done — and given the efficiencies of scale, if it can be coordinated at a league level, lots of people benefit simultaneously.

Community. Getting dozens of families together in the same place at the same time brings people together. We often take it for granted, but with the schedule challenges, sometimes the only chance you may have to reconnect with other parents and families are the few minutes you may bump into them accidentally. A team may discover they have a new cheering section of kids from their neighborhood or school whose game completed on a nearby field a few minutes earlier. Friendships that cross teams or schools can develop, and coordinating after the game is a piece of cake. And there's a benefit to local business too — a quick trip for pizza or ice cream after the game to a favorite local spot is easy to coordinate.

Memories. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly — watching my son and his friends develop over the years playing flag football, and in my case the eventual experience of participating in that process as a coach, has been one of the greatest experiences I have had thus far as a parent. That experience shouldn't be limited to die-hard coaches willing to coordinate a season of out-of-town games. I was completely clueless when I first got involved with flag, and I'm sure there are many kids (and parents) out there yet to discover abilities they didn't know they had. In my opinion, the more people who get a chance to experience that for themselves, the better.