How an all-female coaching staff built a girls flag football team from scratch

In the biting wind, fingers fumbled as girls pinned numbers onto their soccer hoodies, volleyball T-shirts and softball sweatshirts representing St. Louis Park High School. Freshman Lauryn Pohlman, luckily, had already bought bright pink football gloves — yet to be broken in, but providing relief from the April cold.

When St. Louis Park athletic director Andy Ewald told 26-year-old P.E. and health teacher Kayla Ross the Minnesota Vikings were sponsoring an expanded high school flag football league and the Orioles would have one of the league’s eventual 51 teams, Ross, who also plays receiver and quarterback for the Minnesota Vixen professional women’s tackle football team, stepped up as its quarterback — the metaphorical kind, in this case.

As Ross began to spread the word to interested girls — ones she taught at the school in the first-ring suburb of Minneapolis, others she coached and their friends — she asked what they wanted from the season.

“[The girls] requested to have other female coaches,” Ross said. “I promised them I would find some ones that I think would be a good fit.”

Ross did that with her Vixen teammates — Emily Sampson, Chloe Anderson and Nicki Hiber — along with other staff members from around her school.

Ross had coached JV basketball and soccer at St. Louis Park but had never run her own program. Her signature backward baseball cap was easy to spot as she wove between stations at tryouts, where players were tasked to run a 40-yard dash, practice catching or cut around cones.

“We’re not here to judge — well, we kind of are,“ Ross told the girls gathered around her ahead of tryouts. “You’re going to drop balls today, and that’s OK.”

Few of SLP’s players had football experience. Only one student, junior Linda Yang, had played organized flag through a local Hmong league. Other girls were soccer, basketball and lacrosse players. Junior Ingrid Kotnik had danced for 16 years and never played a team sport but recently felt burnt out from her longtime pastime.

“I figured, since it was the first year of the sport, it would be different, whereas if I tried out for girls basketball, those girls have been playing since like elementary school,” Kotnik said.

Sophomores Maya Balcos and Elizabeth “Biz” Sumpter often showed up to Monday and Wednesday evening flag practices in their softball uniforms, bats poking out of their bags, straight from their fast-pitch games.

After the Orioles’ first practice, junior Sydney McGary-Walters lagged behind. She was balancing flag with spring club soccer and voted one of four varsity captains by her teammates. But what did “captain” mean for a sport she’d never played before?

“Can I stop by during free period?” McGary-Walters asked, offering to help cut out play guides for the players’ wrist coaches.

The Orioles needed to squeeze everything they could into a short ramp-up to that weekend’s first scrimmage against Bloomington.

“I was nervous I was going to be horrible,” McGary-Walters said. There’s a vulnerability to scrambling up a steep learning curve. “We only have our raw skill.”

But to Ross, “I could see it in their eyes,” she said. “They were ready.”

At the team’s first scrimmage — a resounding win at Bloomington — the girls were surprised. Despite some false starts, dropped passes and rules that needed to be ironed out, they looked athletic and explosive.

“It went way better than I expected,” junior Mira Halverson said. “I should have expected higher from these girls.”

The team’s second regular-season doubleheader on May 4 was the first truly warm Sunday of the spring, with the kind of bright sun that had players comparing tan lines on their arms and legs.

They had already beaten Champlin Park, 26-18 — the team that, a week before, Ross pointed to and said, “That’s our test,” marking the Rebels as stiff competition, thanks to their deep youth flag football program.

Instead, it was Cooper that sent the Orioles into overtime this week. Pohlman had to leap into the end zone to catch a deep pass from Johnson over a defender’s head. As the sideline erupted, she spiked the ball in celebration.

A point was proved: Despite St. Louis Park’s quick start, the season wouldn’t be easy.

The Orioles swept their final doubleheader against Benilde-St. Margaret’s and Champlin Park on May 18 to claim their conference’s first regular-season title.

“Random Ms. Ross facts for 500,” said junior Amelia Beach, sitting beneath a Vixen flag pinned to the wall.

Ross was skeptical they’d get it right. What kind of cat does Ms. Ross have?

“Oh, we know this,” said Beach, rightfully confident as they scribbled the correct answer onto their whiteboard.

In P.E., Ross watched as a handful of junior varsity flag players taught their classmates about hitches and slants, no longer playing catch-up to boys who grew up playing football.

“I’ve seen a shift, because they used to be a little timid talking about it and embarrassed, and it’s not something to be embarrassed about,” Ross said. “They see that now.”

“Big day! Big day!” assistant coach Hiber said as she arrived ahead of St. Louis Park’s first game against Richfield. Seeded No. 1 in their four-team section bracket, the Orioles needed two wins to qualify for the 12-team state tournament.

SLP dominated the second half to roll to a 38-6 win over Richfield in the first game. Against a small but mighty Two Rivers squad in the district final, the Orioles lost 20-8.

A win can show how much a game means — case in point, the circle of five Two Rivers players jumping, hollering with joy. So can a loss. St. Louis Park players who weren’t friends two months ago embraced one another and mourned a tournament they hadn’t known existed two months ago.

“I’ve coached a lot of things,” Ross said, “and this is it.” She had her nephew’s graduation that evening and knew she’d be in a somber mood. But she still said goodbye to each player and thanked their parents.

“Three more years,” Ross said to the Pohlmans when they came up to thank her for spearheading their daughter’s new favorite sport. “She’s built for this.”

The Monday after the Orioles’ playoff loss, in the gym during lunch, players discussed summer jobs, before talk turned toward next year. They rattled off ideas for combined clinics with other schools, for a flag tournament in P.E. class, for fall scrimmages.

After a final just-for-fun practice, the captains compared notes on their speeches for the next day’s end-of-season banquet.

At the banquet, Ross also took to the podium to thank the coaches and players. She said she was nervous speaking to the crowd, but it was far from the hardest thing she’d done that year.

“Having an all-female coaching staff is something that I personally never had the opportunity to be a part of, but I truly believe it’s made all the difference to these girls,” Ross told the coaches. “You show up for the whole player, not just the athlete on the field.”

Addressing the players, Ross continued: “Thank you all for taking a chance on something new this year, for stepping out of your comfort zones. ... You get to say you were part of the very first ever girls flag football program at St. Louis Park High School. That’s not just cool, that’s historic.”