Manitoba Score Magazine :: FOOTBALL MINUS THE VIOLENCE = THE FASTEST GROWING SPORT IN MANITOBA

Three years ago, flag football was a nice diversion for kids who liked football but hated the hitting. Today, the game is growing so fast, Football Manitoba is starting to run out of fields.

Erin Sweryd thinks her San Francisco 49ers jersey is pretty cool. But she also liked her Miami Dolphins jersey because, as she says, “I like Dolphins and Miami seems pretty nice.”

Dolphins or Niners, it really doesn’t make a lot of difference. Like a growing number of girls her age, Erin just likes how she looks when she intercepts a pass in her official NFL jersey.

“Flag football is just such an exciting game,” she said with a smile. “I love catching passes, but I really love to play defence. My dad always tells me, ‘defence wins championships’ and I just find it’s more of a challenge for me to go and grab the flag. But interceptions... interceptions are very fun.”

League Commissioner Kevin Sweryd also serves as a coach and referee, and Daughter Erin loves to play defence: 'Interceptions are always fun'.

Sweryd is a 12-year-old Winnipeg girl who just happens to love the National Football League. However, she admits that she doesn’t watch all that much of it on television. She loves the NFL because the league sends her and her teammates a new set of jerseys every year so they can look their best when they participate in Football Manitoba’s Winnipeg Flag Football League.

“It’s really cool, actually,” said her dad, Kevin, a Winnipeg funeral home owner, flag football coach and the commissioner of the Winnipeg Flag Football League. “The league used to be operated by Football Manitoba in conjunction with the NFL and CFL, but the CFL just doesn’t have the resources to do this type of thing anymore. But the NFL is still with us and they’re our major sponsor. The kids get NFL jerseys every year and they’re high-quality jerseys, too. Then the NFL pays for our big national tournament in July.

The NFL has been a generous sponsor of Flag Football in Canada, supplying official jerseys to all teams in addition to sponsoring the national tournament.

“They used to operate an international competition, but it just got too big. I would say this is not only one of the fastest growing sports in Manitoba, but one of the fastest growing sports everywhere in North America.”

Flag football is a simple game: Five or six players on each side, it’s all passing, catching and running. Grab a flag and the ball carrier is down. It’s aggressive enough, just not so crushingly violent, like its big, ugly cousin, tackle football.

But it is a great way to learn the game before tackling tackle. Greg Borsboom is a flag football coach with the 8-9-year-old Packers. His daughter Tylo, 8, not only plays flag in the spring but joins with her basketball playing twin sister Neve, and plays atom tackle with the Mustangs in the fall.

Greg Borsboom, pictured here with son Jett (6) and daughter Tylo (8), believes that flag serves as a terrific introduction to the game, with its emphasis on skill development and fun.

“I have four kids – one girl playing and one son playing flag,” said Borsboom. “My eldest son Easton, who’s 12, decided he wanted to try lacrosse this spring and Neve is a basketball player. But Easton used to play flag, my youngest son, 6-year-old Jett, plays flag and all four will play tackle with the Mustangs this August.

“Flag is a lot of fun. It’s competitive, but more importantly, it’s a great forerunner for tackle because you learn the skills – passing, catching and running with the ball. When you’re ready to play tackle, you have a background in the game.”

According to Gena Cook, Football Manitoba’s Program Director for Flag Football, when she started with the league in 2007, there were fewer than 1,000 players. This year, there will be more than 2,000 and in addition to the 7-17-year-old age groups, there will also be an adult league.

“The league started seven years ago and it’s caught on for two reasons,” Cook said. “A lot of kids want to play football but sometimes their parents don’t want them to play because of the hitting and for other kids, they don’t want to play tackle because they don’t like the hitting. This game gives kids a chance to play football and not get hit.”

Because there is no hitting, kids don’t feel intimidated. Especially smaller kids who just want to run around and play a game of skill with their friends.

“Every year more kids try flag and the game grows,” said Kevin Sweryd. “There are some kids who play as nine or 10 years olds and when they get bigger at 11, 12 or 13 they have the basic concept of the game and they can step up and play tackle.

“Other kids just like the game, know they’ll never play tackle and just enjoy flag. My son Adam is 13 and he plays flag because he didn’t want to play tackle, but that doesn’t mean that at some point, he won’t want to try tackle football. Right now, he’s just having a lot of fun playing a great game.”

Football Manitoba executive director, Rob Berkowitz is still shocked at the incredible growth of the game in Manitoba, but isn’t completely surprised. Berkowitz knows it’s a great game, he just can’t believe how fast it’s grabbed a foothold as one of the province’s most popular sports.

"We have seen a tremendous increase in membership since we implemented our grass roots flag football program in 2004,” Berkowitz sad. “It truly is a wonderful introduction to the game of football for young boys and girls and because this program operates in the spring, it doesn't cannibalize our existing tackle programs that operate each fall.

“It has become an extremely popular and successful program and make no mistake, I’m a CFL guy, but I’m grateful to the NFL for it’s ongoing support of flag football in Canada.”

According to the NFL’s Youth Football website, the NFL Flag Football Program was launched in 1996 and was designed to teach youngsters about football while emphasizing participation and sportsmanship.

“NFL flag gives young people the chance to be an official NFL player as they discover the values of teamwork and sportsmanship,” said NFL commissioner Roger Goodell at last year’s Super Bowl in Tampa. “It’s difficult not to be impressed with the growth of the game around the world. It’s even growing in England. In Florida, it’s the fastest growing high school sport for girls. Almost 200,000 young people played in Canada and the United States last year. And now it’s on 32 U.S. college campuses.

“We believe football is the greatest of all games but we recognize that not everyone can handle the hitting and not everyone is big enough to play the traditional version of the game. But everyone can play flag football and more and more young people are playing every year.”

Like Erin Sweryd. At an even 5-feet tall, she’s no giant, but she’s an accomplished flag football player who is in the midst of her third season.

“I’ve been a Dolphin, an Argonaut and now a 49er,” she said proudly. “We have a really good team this year, but next year, we’re going to try and put together an all-girls team. There are definitely enough good players around and we think we’d be very competitive as an all-girls team.”

Gena Cook is not surprised that there are plenty of good female players. She’s seen the amazing growth of flag football first-hand and admits she’s more impressed every day.

“This game has really caught on,” she said. “I know that because we’ve added a league for 17-year-olds. If 17-year-olds, the guys who have jobs and cars and girlfriends, will give some of that up and make time to play flag football, then I know it’s popular.

“We now have leagues in Winnipeg, Winkler, Thunder Bay, Dryden and Brandon. We have 10 different age groups and at least three divisions in each age group. We not only have more than 2,000 players, we have more than 250 coaches in Winnipeg. We have a women’s league and a men’s league. The men’s league is the only one with blocking and punting.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the fastest growing sport in Manitoba.”

“And there is no doubt in my mind, we’d be bigger if we get our hands on more fields,” the commissioner said. “We do zero advertising because we couldn’t handle any more teams. I’m afraid to hang our registration posters because we don’t have enough fields to accommodate all the kids who want to play.

“This year, we got more community clubs involved and that meant more fields. We’ve sent material to Steinbach, Portage and Thompson. But how popular have we become? Well, I’m starting to do presentations at Manitoba Hutterite Colonies. The Hutterite kids love this game. Hey, all kids love this game. It’s just a great game.”