I began coaching Girls Flag Football at TFL as an assistant back in 2016 when my daughter and
her friends were 8/9 years old. We had immediate success since the girls were all multiple sport
athletes at that point (primarily soccer but also softball).
In 2017, we had so many girls request to play with us that we had to split into 2 different teams.
I volunteered to be Head Coach of one of the teams and we never looked back. In my first
season as head coach, we went 9-0-1 (the tie was with our other team…we agreed not to play
each other).
In 2021, we played in our first National Championship tournament in Tampa. We fell short, but
got better each game and left with many things to build on. We made the decision to play in
the boys’ league that winter to prepare for the 2022 NFL Flag tournament. We represented
Houston and The Farm League twice at the national level (Tampa 2021 and Las Vegas 2022).
After the Las Vegas tournament, we decided to take a break from competition since most of the
girls were going to play both high school and club soccer. Over my many seasons coaching, we
only lost one game in the girls divisions and that ended up being in our very first season (our
record was 38-1-1).
My assistant coach, Rich Elder, had a lot to do with that success and I couldn’t have done it
without him! Towards the end of my coaching time, my son Braden also started helping out. He
is attending Texas State and wants to be a coach as well. And we always had a great group of
parents, which definitely made the job easier.
My coaching philosophy has always been to instill the basics, but give my players the
opportunity to change things if they see something on the field. I coached them hard, never
going easy on them just because they’re girls. In fact, I’d say my girls were tougher than most of
the boys teams we played. We preached good sportsmanship, so no playing dirty or trash
talking. But we also didn’t let up until the final whistle blew so we played hard the entire game.
A lot of people may not have liked it, but I would have been doing a disservice to my girls if I
told them to take it easy.
I’m tremendously proud to receive this honor and I’m sincerely humbled by it. We’ve spent a
lot of time at TFL over the years between flag football, baseball, softball, and 7 on 7. It’s a
fantastic organization and facility, and I’m thankful for all the memories made while there.
