If they’re nervous once they step on the sphere, it has nothing to do with a insecurity. It’s simply that they are younger and, just like the boys, studying a brand new sport.
DALLAS — This fall, there are 350 children enjoying flag football within the White Rock YMCA league in Dallas — and 348 of them are boys.
But when Coach Gus Cruz brings his Chiefs workforce of first-graders into the huddle, he has two choices that no different workforce within the league can declare.
“We’re gonna do a trick play,” he tells the workforce throughout a latest Friday night contest. “Isiah, you catch it — and then hand it off to Eleanor on the switch.”
Cruz has motive to consider the decision may catch the opposite workforce off-guard. A couple of minutes earlier, when the opposing Broncos bought their first have a look at the Chiefs, a number of of the boys on that squad laughed out loud.
One could not consider what he was seeing: “They got two girls!?” he blurted out as solely a 6-year-old can.
But if the sight of the Hayden Simmons and Eleanor Mayer stunned him, simply think about what he was pondering when the Chiefs run their trick play — and Eleanor comes streaking across the edge, blowing previous each single Bronco on her method to the top zone.
At this level, a number of video games into the season, Hayden and Eleanor are used to the opposite groups’ reactions.
“They kind of say, ‘Why are there girls on this team? Girls don’t know how to play sports,'” Hayden says.
But these two do know how you can play sports activities — and play sports activities properly. If they really feel nervous once they step on the football area, it has nothing to do with a insecurity. It simply has to do with the truth that they’re so younger, and so they’re attempting one thing new. As Eleanor places it: “I’ve never been on a football team before.”
Of course, neither have lots of these judgmental boys on the Chiefs’ rivals.
As for Cruz, the coach does not thoughts the snide remarks. In reality, he says it might usually work to the Chiefs’ benefit.
“They underestimate the girls,” Cruz says. “Other kids see the girls and they’re like, ‘Oh they’re girls, they can’t play.’ I’ll have a girl line up in the back and she doesn’t get any attention. And then she gets the ball — and boom! She’s gone.”
A couple of minutes after Eleanor’s massive run, it’s Hayden’s flip: The workforce pitches it to her within the backfield on the primary play of the drive. And earlier than you possibly can search for, there’s a blonde pigtail flying down the sphere, all the way in which to the top zone.
Her mother Christie Simmons could not be prouder of Hayden’s success on the gridiron.
“It’s fun to see my daughter be just as tough as the boys — and be just as good, if not better than the boys,” she says. “It’s awesome!”
Meanwhile, Eleanor’s mom Emily Mayer says her daughter is, properly, very aggressive. And flag football has been a very good outlet for that.
“She was so tiny is what I thought [at first],” Mayer says. “But she doesn’t let any of it get the best of her. She loves to win.”
The concept to play really got here from Eleanor’s older sister, and one in every of her pals.
“Her older sister actually [also] played on the boys team with another girl,” Mayer explains. “They were the only two girls who played with the third grade team last year.”
Her youthful daughter, although? She took to the game fast.
“I mean, she comes home from practices and she starts telling me plays in the car — like, where she’s positioned and where all of her teammates are,” Mayer says.
Sound like a doubtful declare? Sure. But ask Hayden what she does on the sphere and he or she’ll rattle off an outline that might make Patrick Mahomes proud.
“When Eleanor had the ball and I ran that way, she ran that way,” she says. “And then she handed me the ball. The guy was coming — running for her — but they had no idea. And they were like, ‘Where’s the ball? What? That play works every time.”
On this latest Friday night time, the Chiefs beat the Broncos 24-16 to remain undefeated on the 12 months. And, as quickly because the groups have shaken fingers, Eleanor runs over to the sideline to high-five her mother — just a little excited concerning the win, however much more so by the reward she’s been promised.
“We can get ice cream, Mommy!” she says. “Because our coach said if we play really good and we have, uhm, a really good score, he would get us all ice cream!”
On this night time, the girls have earned that ice cream cone — in addition to the opposite workforce’s respect, and the proper to say they belong below the Friday Night Lights proper alongside the boys.
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