Portal High School Girls Flag football team are playing at noon today in the GHSA Flag Football championship in Atlanta against Calvary Day School. This is Portal's inaugural season.
Georgia Public Broadcasting is broadcasting the championship live.
CLICK HERE TO WATCH
From Coach Jay Reddick's Facebook Post
"Well it was about a year ago that GHSA said it was adding girls flag football as an official sport and I had an interest meeting in the media center to promote the sport at Portal High School.
47 girls showed up that day to hear my sales pitch about flag football. I told them it was going to be a special year. They would be a part of the first ever girls flag football team at PHS and that we were going to be successful.
When it came to tryouts only 13 Portal varsity girls decided to believe in what I was telling them and go out on a limb and try flag football. We needed at least 14 girls in order to have 7 on 7 scrimmages at practice so I had to reach out to a couple of 8th graders to come practice with us so now we had 15 girls.
Before the season started I printed out the GHSA flag football state championship logo and attached the phrase “The Drive to Atlanta” with it and taped it to the window of the media center. Atlanta is where the state championship was going to be held.
If you’re a high school coach that is the goal at the start of every season to be playing in that game. I don’t think these girls and their parents realized just how serious I was about making this team successful. I put everything I had into this team.
Now that this season is coming to a close I think if you asked the girls about me some of them would say I fuss a lot and that they can never please me, but I think they would follow it up by saying Coach Reddick just wants us to do it right.
We had so many girls who chose to play flag football that were also playing softball, cheerleading, basketball and band that sacrifices were going to have to be made in order for us to be successful. Sunday practices were necessary, lunch times were spent studying and learning about the game, and some girls would have to practice multiple sports in the same day.
I told the girls before the season started that we were going to be successful and told some of the parents that if I didn’t believe then the girls wouldn’t believe so that’s what I preached to them.
These 15 girls that put in all the hard work learning this game will get their reward by experiencing all the excitement and hoopla of the most coveted game GHSA has to offer, the state championship!
We’ll be playing at a huge collegiate stadium in Atlanta, the red carpet will be laid out for us, and the game will be televised statewide at noon on GPB.
Our season ends where it began with a game against our region opponent, Calvary. When all the dust has settled the two smallest schools in this division that consisted of almost fifty 1A-5A schools will face off for the state championship. What a story."
