The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Following passion, women go far to play flag football
From a distance, it looks like college kids in sweat clothes tossing a football around on a campus green space.
Draw closer, and it’s apparent this is no sandlot game.
A coach is explaining routes he wants receivers to run on a play he calls “Bingo.” Then he tells his quarterbacks to make quicker decisions. Next he demonstrates how a receiver in motion sets up as a blocker next to the center and the running back takes a handoff and heads for a hole that should open on the left side.
The women Jaison Jones is coaching listen intently and ask lots of questions. More than half showed up at Midland University from faraway places to continue playing
the growing sport of flag football at the 1,600-student school in a town of 26,000 nestled in the farmland of eastern Nebraska.
Allison Maulfair and Spencer Mauk were teammates at their high school
in Bradenton, Florida, a state where a nation-high 7,700 girls at 278 schools play varsity flag football.
Jones recruited them at summer showcase, and after Maulfair and Mauk made the 1,500-mile drive to Fremont for a visit, they decided it was where they wanted to be.
“I’m just really passionate about this sport,” Maulfair said. “I fell in love with it my freshman year of high school and haven’t stopped loving it. It doesn’t matter where I’m at. It just matters playing the game with great people, really.”
E’leseana Patterson figured she was done with flag football after she quarterbacked her Las Vegas high school team to a state championship in 2019. Her plan was to stay home, help her mom and take classes at UNLV.
On a lark, she went to a showcase in Vegas and ended up impressing Jones. She took a virtual campus tour and knew she wanted to be part of what was happening at Midland, as did four other players she competed against in high school.