Talk about football and the ‘Third Week of October’ stretches back more than a century in the state of Tennessee.
But it was a new history made this year at the high school level, not the collegiate one, when the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association recently held its inaugural Unified Flag Football State Championship.
The sport, burgeoning in popularity throughout the United States, is the most recent to be added to TSSAA’s Special Olympics championship endeavors, coming on the heels of statewide bowling and track and field championships, respectively.
“Unified flag was kind of blowing up across the country for Special Olympics and Special Olympics Tennessee hopped on and it’s slowly become one of the bigger sports we have in the state,” said Colby Coulter, Unified Sports Coordinator who works in conjunction with TSSAA and Special Olympics Tennessee. “The third weekend in October, we had our fall games and had a huge number of schools that were interested in coming out for our Special Olympics Tennessee fall games.
“Last year we did an emerging year symmetric with girls flag football, with the state of Tennessee and TSSAA ready to bring flag football to the limelight.”
That symmetric approach prompted synergy in the sport; the Unified Flag season is in the fall and the girls’ TSSAA season is in the spring.
Hardin Valley Academy
“The idea behind that was we would hope to see many of the girls’ flag football players be partners with Unified Flag in the fall and to make connections with our Unified athletes,” Coulter said. “We hoped those two would work together and saw that pretty well last year.
“We had roughly 30 schools signed on last year, and we ultimately ended up with 21 total schools that played at least one game.”
The sport’s Unified growth was reflected in those recent championships held at Richard Siegel Park.
Overall in the state, the number of regular-season contests ticked upward this year as did full-schedule participation and team involvement, with a full roster consistent of 10 athletes and some 200 young student-athletes throughout the Volunteer State able to make their history on the weekend so closely associated with the longstanding Alabama-Tennessee SEC football rivalry.
Ultimately in the double-elimination, round-robin event, Hardin Valley Academy from East Tennessee topped McGavock High School, 38-30, for the championship.
McGavock High School
But what heartened Coulter was the sport’s continued growth and expanded opportunities for young people, as well as the relentless selflessness of those who coached, officiated and otherwise assisted in helping young people build lifelong memories.
“When we first started, a definite concern of mine, our coaches for the most part are special education teachers or parent volunteers and a lot are already coaching bowling, track field, volunteering in their communities as well,” Coulter said. “Our coaching staffs tend to be really overworked. I wasn’t sure if it would be something our coaches wanted, to add another sport on. And our coaches said, ‘No, we want this because our kids want it.’ That was a sale point for me. They’ve done the heavy lifting of putting teams together, schedules together, transportation hurdles. Being a coach of a sport, it’s funny in our state the championship was October 18 and two days later, I’m in a state bowling meeting and every single football coach was at the bowling meeting.
“I’m just incredibly impressed by the coaches who take all this on, coming from a coaching and teaching background myself. I know how much a school community can ask from you and these teachers, coaches, parents are taking on a lot. I’m just nonstop impressed with them.”
Up next? Seeing the sport’s continued growth, particularly Coulter noted with such a tremendous backdrop of support ensconced in Tennessee for the hundreds of youth participating.
“With flag football, it can be tough with the amount of travel necessary for regular -season games; logistics are often tough for teams because they’re not all necessarily in a place where schools are financially ready to take on all that’s involved with launching a new sport,” Coulter said. “But Special Olympics has done a great job of covering a lot of costs, and schools can ask for grant money for travel, food, officials’ costs, uniform costs, anything.
“Special Olympics has said don’t let financials be a hurdle for you.”
Instead, opportunity is harvesting new dreams and manifesting new memories.
