A brand new youth sports league is up and running in Macon County.
For the past several years, flag football has grown rapidly across the country, offering a safer and less expensive version of America’s most popular sport. In conjunction with the National Football League’s youth flag program, local athletes can now represent their favorite teams on the field.
“I was talking to a friend from Swain County, and they were talking about their flag program,” said Macon County Youth Football president Daryl Oberley. “I was like, ‘You guys play flag over there?’, and he was like, ‘Yeah. Man, it’s helped us out tremendously.’ So he started telling me about all the benefits of it, and I thought, ‘You know, I bet the kids around here would like that.’”
Following last fall’s youth football season, county Parks and Recreation officials reached out to Oberley, saying they had received many requests for a local flag league. From there, Oberley reached out to NFL Flag and obtained all the tools he needed to begin.
“We partnered with NFL Flag, so we get sweet, cool jerseys like this,” said Oberley, showing off a reversible Cincinnati Bengals-branded shirt. “The benefits we get with that are that we get a kit with a jersey, a belt and a flag for every kid that signs up, and they charge us $30 for that. And then every five kids that sign up they send us a football, so we get footballs to practice with and all that kid of stuff.”
Armed with NFL uniforms, equipment and even promotional materials, this April Oberley put out feelers to gauge interest in a possible league. In just a few short weeks, he received an overwhelming response.
“My whole idea behind it was for the youth tackle program to come out and get another month of conditioning and practice handing the ball off, throwing the ball – some things that they might not get a whole lot of with pads on,” said Oberley. “But, it’s turned into way more than that. ... We’ve got 180 kids, [from] five-year-olds all the way up to 17. ... I was kind of hoping for 75-100 kids – that was my goal, and we’ve pretty much doubled it.”
At the Parker Meadows Complex June 7, the Franklin Flag Football League convened for an evening of scrimmages to acclimate players, coaches and referees. With 17 teams from Franklin and two from Highlands, including 28 veteran tackle football players and roughly 150 new to the game, Oberley says flag football has a much broader appeal.
“For one, there’s no contact, so it gets more kids out,” he explained. “For the parents, or even a kid that might be on the fence and doesn’t really want to play tackle, but they want to play some sort of football, I feel like we’ve hit that kid.”
Following the league-wide scrimmages Friday night, the teams planned to play their first-ever games on Monday, kicking off a short month-long season of six games. After that, elite players will have a chance to visit their favorite team’s facilities.
“There’s regional tournaments that they usually have in the spring, and I think Atlanta, Charlotte, Tennessee and Jacksonville are in our region,” said Oberley. “So, we could form a team up, go down there and play against teams from all over, and play at the Falcons facility or the Panthers facility. And then if you win that, they send you up on Hall of Fame weekend to Canton [Ohio] and you get to play in a flag tournament up there.”