Research Project(Last Draft)

Women’s flag football is supposed to be the equivalent of men’s football in high school. However, it is not taken as seriously causing it to be dangerous. I believe women are getting more hurt without anyone realizing because they take flag football as a sport for girls. Every high school must provide equal athletic opportunities for both sexes. This means if there is a boy’s football team there must be an equivalent for girls, this results in flag football. I believe the referees in flag football are not doing their job to protect the players. I think flag football players should be given more safety gear, the sport should be taken more seriously by the referees, and the school should take it more seriously.

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The schools should also show more interest in having a flag football team. We had to pay for our own gear. Not only did we have to pay for our own gear we had to pay an initial seventy five dollars to keep to sport funded. After paying for the uniforms it was about fifty doallars. One hundred and twenty five dollars of your own money was a lot. Many of th girls had to pay it theselves and had jobs. Our JV team got old uniforms that were gross and outdated of our colors. They had stains from sweat and were ripped. The school definitely did not treat us as the “equivalent” to boy’s football. The boys football team were treated like gods and were worshiped by the staff and teachers. The school knew there was a flag team but it was never advertised unless we forced our way onto DTV (Dwyer’s morning announcements) or made signs. Most of the time there was a field for us to practice on so we had to drive to a nearby park. It is extremely hard to be a captain to a team when the school doesn’t even care about you. This is when our team bonding came in handy, because even though we didn’t get the recognition we deserved we inspired each other to keep playing. If the school cared more and helped sponsor safety gear maybe it would help the players be more protected when playing. We never even saw it as flag football, girls tackled each other left and right. When we did get people to come out they always came back for more games. The girls that played flag football were tough and if you were hit or fell you rolled till you were back on your feet and kept playing. I had people tell me they had no clue it was actually this entertaining to watch. I also took it into my own hands as captain to make a deal with the boys lacrosse captains to help promote and attend their games if they did the same for us and it worked. Many of my teammates loved the sport of football and would have loved a chance to play the real sport, I know I did. One of my teammates Megan that also played soccer, wanted to try out for the football team as a kicker. We also supported her and thought it was a great idea, however the school did not see it the way we did. They would not allow a girl to try out for the boy’s football team, they might get hurt. Of course none of them ever watched one of our games. Still if they weren’t going to give us the equivalent to boy’s football then why not let us try out for the actual football team. A local school had their own version of a powder puff game but the girls got together got a petition and finally got permission to play a real game. They were in full pads and every single girl said they loved it. We are in a new generation were women are trying to show society that we are not fragile. We can literally do everything boys can do in heals however we would prefer cleats.

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An article called Kicking Like A Boy is about Women competing in Male dominated sports. More and more women are starting to compete in these sports. Women competing in these sports are showing the world that we can keep up with our male counterparts. The study is on Australian football and how it is male dominated. Women have started to intergrade themselves into the game. They explain when the first women’s league was made and why they wanted to play football. Many of the women wanted to play due to their siblings, bonding with fathers through football, or having a sport history. I can relate to this since I bonded with my father when I was little over football. I also just decided to try the sport due may history in sports. One article talked about how tackle is actually safer then Flag football. If flag football is more dangerous then tackle football, then aren’t they just contradicting themselves. The fact that they are basically ignorant to the new research proves that they do not care about girl’s sports. If they realized that flag is just as dangerous as tackle, then they would let girls have their own real football team. I am not saying that girl should compete with guys, but we should have our own equivalent team. It has been proved that enough girls would play tackle and it would be less dangerous for girls then I believe it is just the schools not caring.

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The referees should also take the sport more seriously. I believe that the players would get less injured if the referees actually followed their rule book. The rule book to a referees means a lot to everyone. IT should be the referee’s bible, players put all their trust into the referees to make the right calls. They are the only unbiased people on the field to make the right calls and if they don’t follow or care about the game then the rule book means nothing. Every game they are supposed to line the girls up and check our equipment such as our mouth guards, cleats and jewelry. This is extremely important especially since one of my concussions was from not wearing a mouth guard and getting hit in the face, I also cut my mouth and was bleeding everywhere. I think I remember one time in the past four seasons I played that a referee actually checked our gear before a game. Mikayla said, “If I recall correctly, the referees rarely checked to make sure we had mouth guards or if we had taken off all of our jewelry.” Katie also talked about how the referees were carless about checking gear and times were she had gone into the game without a mouth guard. Other times the games or plays were just dangerous and should have been stopped. There were plenty of games I can recall that my coach was screaming his head off because of a bad call by the referee. At one game my sophomore year my coach was so sick of the referees not calling any fouls, he was screaming the whole first half. The players were obviously helpless because we cannot say anything to the referees in fear of getting kicked out, although that has happened before in a game to me. Most of the players on both teams were injured and tired . In the Third quarter after another bad or late call our coach didn’t say anything he just started packing up and called my teammates off the field. All he yelled as he was leaving was “I’m not risking the safety of my girls because of your bullshit calls.”  When I think about our team the biggest picture that pops in my mind is our T-shirt logos. Our coach protecting us is what our team was about. If you were a part of flag and you walked around with the neon green logo, then you had a family on and off the field. The moment my coach did that I never respected him more and before that day I never realized how much he cared for us. The was one of the first times I realized that I will always have a Flag family.

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 One of the most important sections of the rule book is about fouls involving contact. Flag footall is a non- contact sport. However even in the hand book for the referees it has a huge sections on contact between opponents of the opposite team. Referees need to look out for incidental contact. According to the hand book, Incidental contact between opponents that does not grant either player an advantage should not be penalized. Any contact that is not incidental should be penalized and, if it does not already qualify as a foul, it is called a ‘contact foul’. Players who make serious contact with an opponent, either as an act of aggression or to halt the advancement of the ball, should be disqualified. There are certain fouls that are called if there is contact such as holding, roughing the passer, pass interference. Holding was a big issue due to the fact of grabbing on to shirts and many girls would tie their flags on. Roughing the passer means that the defenders pay not contact the ball out of the passers hand such as batting the ball down. Pass interference was always the most controversial. There are individual calls such as not playing the ball, playing through an opponent, grabbing an arm, arm bar, pushing and there are many other reasons a play would be called.

 At our actual district game our running back was purposely slammed into and broke her nose while she was running a hook and ladder play, nothing was done by the referees. This happened so often that obviously, I am not proud to say it but, we would take it into our own hands and let’s just say others would get injured. Not only that they didn’t care about dangerous situations they didn’t even care about the game. My freshman year one of our games close to the seasons end the end of the game came to a tie. At the time we were playing gardens our second biggest opponent. As we were getting ready to go into over time the referees started packing up. When the couches went up to ask what they were doing, they simply said they had somewhere to be and they couldn’t conduct the overtime and it was kept as a tie. They would never do that to a boy’s high school football game. Not all referees were terrible there was one that knew all the girls and cared about his job but this was mostly due to the fact that his daughter played.

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I know from personal experience that referees have failed to stop or see potential danger. People sprain, fracture, break and even jam their figures. I relate to this source and I am sure many other players do as well. I have fractured about half of my fingers. While playing the sport we were never truly taught how to treat it except to pop it back out and put ice on it. The worst thing I had ever witnessed made me rethink if I even want to continue playing. During play offs before districts my team was off to the side and we were watching the game before us finish up it was Jupiter vs. Gardens. On one of the last plays Jupiter had a chance to bring it back but they had to get a first down. After the ball was snapped we realized they were going for it all. The ball was thrown half way down the field and we were only watching the Jupiter player go for it. However, the safety from the gardens team was coming from behind and also went for the ball. They ran full speed into each other and they both hit the ground out cold. One girl was eventually up and helped back to her sideline. The other however was still on the ground. The whole crowd was silent as an ambulance bed was carted onto the field as they took her out you could only see blood. She ended up being fine except for a huge concussion and a broken wrist but the fact of maybe having a light helmet could of protected her head and stopped this from occurring. Then after that we were expected to play like normal and go on as if we didn’t just realize how dangerous this could actually be. The girl that was taken away ended up being fine except for a huge concussion and a broken wrist but the fact of maybe having a light helmet could of protected her head and stopped this from occurring. Some injuries can effect you your whole life and I would of much rather taken precautions then deal with my existing injuries every day. I have tendonitis in both of my knees and my team mate Katie has it in her left ankle. Katie and I have also gotten concussions from playing. My other team mate Mikayla that I interviewed stated, “Some light helmets would protect girls in case they run into each other or when the rusher is running at the quarter back.” Also in her interview she explained to me how she badly bruised her knee cap after landing hard from pulling a flag. She couldn’t straighten her knee or put any weight on her leg for a couple weeks. She never had a concussion which is very lucky. We also talked about how that injury has affected her greatly in her normal life. Katie’s injuries also still deeply affect her day to day life since she has a constant pain in her ankle.

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An article called “Flag football finger pop.” Includes a medical journal of a twenty-one-year-old man that was playing flag football. While he was playing all he remembers is feeling a pop and pain in his right small finger (Dedekam,1173). The source includes x-rays and medical records. It goes on to state how he has a complete fracture in his figure and it explains how he cannot move it. The most common injury is the fingers, face, knee, shoulder and ankle (Kaplan, 9). There has been research to create methods such as the no pocket rule, and self-fitting mouth guards, ankle braces. The no pocket rule I think is genius because there were many incidences were fingers get caught in pockets and result in bad injures. Mouth guards are much more effective when they are self-fitting, it helps project your teeth and lips. The ankle braces are mostly for players that have existing injures and to prevent any further damage. Bringing back the article I talked about in my first argument. This article debates whether Flag football is a safer alternative to tackle football. They start it off by saying that injures were actually more common in Flag football than in tackle. They tracked three football leagues and tracked there injures and the detail that came with them. The three leagues generated a total of 46,416 exposures and 128 injuries were reported. There were actually more concussions in flag than in actual tackle football. So even if the fact of the school and society not letting girls play tackle football because they are too fragile, if flag football is more dangerous then tackle football then aren’t they just contradicting themselves.

I think flag football players should be given more safety gear, the sport should be taken more seriously by the referees, and the school should take it more seriously. This is important if the school actually wants to stand by the rule that they must provide equal athletic opportunities for both sexes. I believe the referees should do a better job and we should have more safety gear.