Flag Football Deserves More

By Gisela Armenta – Guest Writer

We’re 15-2-1, yet nobody sees us. Being an underrated team in an underrated sport makes us feel like underrated athletes, so it’s hard to get the recognition we deserve. We work hard, play hard, and win, but playing flag football, you’ll see a lot of adversity, like being compared to boys or other sports who seem to get more attention or opportunities. Flag football is an amazing, growing sport, yet our team sees no recognition for our accomplishments, and I bet you if we were boys, we would.

Every game, in the bleachers, there’s a maximum of 20 people supporting us. It is discouraging to women and girls everywhere to have very few people show up for a game that they would’ve shown up for if boys or men were playing it. Not to throw shade, because girls flag football and girls soccer (sports I am proudly a part of) have definitely had their losses and downs, but overall, you see so many more people showing up to boys’ games in general, win or lose. Girls’ sports and girls/women in general are just as good as men and even better, so I don’t see why we as a society and community still don’t see that fact.

And going on the topic of losing and not showing up or not growing as a society, why do girls’/women’s teams have to be defined by one game or player? Girls soccer loses one game, and all of a sudden, we suck? It makes no sense, but the boys’ team loses, and it’s because “the other team was simply better” or “it wasn’t our day.” This double standard is infuriating.

I can’t speak too much about other girls’ sports at our school since I haven’t played them, and I definitely know in general certain sports just receive less attention overall, but I do know that for the most part, across our school and the world, girls/women receive less recognition for their achievements than they should.

I write this not only for the people at Hayward High School but for everyone. We need to do better. We cannot keep this mentality going that “boys are better than girls” or that “girls can’t be as good as boys” and even say ridiculous things like “girls’ sports are so boring.” We need to come to the realization that these generalizations are coming from viewpoints of mainly men who hate to see a woman succeed and do better than them. So next time you think about paying $8 to see the football games, think about spending $5 for the flag football game, because I promise you it will be more significant for us than you think.

Editor’s Note: After this article was published, the HHS Flag Football team has gone on to win the WACC Shoreline Championship against Bishop O’Dowd on Saturday 10/24. Congratulations Farmers!