Girls flag football is one of the up-and-coming sports in CT. These area teams are excelling at it

WINDSOR – Jalen Hill is the coach of the Hartford Magnet Trinity College Academy girls flag football team, in its second season. Hill is also a defensive coordinator for the Bloomfield football team. There’s a world of difference between the two for the coach, but he enjoys them both. “I have a lot of freshmen and sophomores,” Hill said Saturday of his flag football team. “There’s a lot of learning and understanding the game itself before they can understand concepts. As simple as: How do you grab flags? How do you catch the ball, how do you throw the ball, those kind of things – where do we run, how do we block – it’s more fundamental for us. “We have a great group of girls. The girls are athletic enough to do what I’m asking them to do, but it’s the little details that we’re working on.” HMTCA lost both games Saturday in the first round of the Class M girls flag football state tournament, which is coordinated by the CIAC, even though girls flag football is not classified as a CIAC sport. East Windsor/Windsor Locks, which made the semifinals last year but lost, won two games as part of the group of three teams at Windsor High School Saturday and will advance to the semifinals either May 30 or 31 against an opponent to be determined. East Windsor/Windsor Locks beat SMSA 38-0 and HMTCA 41-0, while SMSA beat HMTCA 40-0. Tianna Gonzalez-Leary (7) of SMSA runs with the ball as Victoria Levinskas (20) and Brooklyn Hill (middle) defend for East Windsor/Windsor Locks during a girls flag football playoff game at Windsor High School Saturday afternoon. East Windsor/Windsor Locks won 38-0 to advance to the semifinals. (Photo by Lori Riley) Tianna Gonzalez-Leary (7) of SMSA runs with the ball as Victoria Levinskas (20) and Brooklyn Hill (middle) defend for East Windsor/Windsor Locks during a girls flag football playoff game at Windsor High School Saturday afternoon. East Windsor/Windsor Locks won 38-0 to advance to the semifinals. (Photo by Lori Riley) Last year, Manchester beat East Hartford for the first state title. There were only 10 teams participating. This year, the number has more than doubled, to 23, and there are two divisions, Class M and Class L. The semifinals and championships for both divisions will take place May 30 and/or 31 at Windsor High School. Flag football has been growing in popularity around the country. Almost 70,000 girls played flag football in the 2024-25 season, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations. Men’s and women’s flag football will be offered in the Olympics in 2028 and in January, the NCAA added flag football to its Emerging Sports for Women program. Last year, there were 40 NCAA schools with women’s flag football teams. In Connecticut, Sacred Heart and UConn have club teams, while Post University has a varsity team. Brandon Jubrey, the founder and president of CT Flag, a state youth flag football organization, pushed to have girls flag football in high schools. In 2022, a local TV station interviewed his daughter Isabella, who was playing flag football. “She said she wanted to play as long as she could because it wasn’t a high school sport yet and once I saw her say ‘Yet,’ I was like, ‘Oh, OK, let’s make this a thing at the high school level,’ because it was in other states,” said Jubrey, whose daughter is now a senior at Northwest Catholic and will play in college. The first year high schools participated, in 2023, there was a jamboree funded by the New York Giants with 12 teams. The next two years, there were six-week seasons, first with 16 schools participating, then 22. “From what we were seeing across the country – the growth – we took it here and embraced it and grew it from nothing to something that’s huge and exciting for these girls,” Jubrey said. “They have opportunities to play at the next level, either collegiately or on an Olympic pathway. It’s so exciting to see the girls embrace the game. East Windsor/Windsor Locks has been a co-op team for two years. That’s how long sophomore Starr Bissessar has been playing. She started with a travel team. “I seen the program for the travel team and told my mom about it and I really wanted to do a sport and get better at it,” Bissessar said. “Ever since I started playing – I love it. I play basketball but it doesn’t feel like how I feel when I play football. “Yeah, there’s been a hard learning curve. Defense…getting to know everything … I didn’t really watch football so I didn’t know that much about it. It took me a while to get used to how everything worked.” Starr Bissessar of East Windsor/Windsor Locks scores an extra point in a 38-0 win over SMSA in a girls flag football playoff game Saturday afternoon at Windsor High. (Photo by Lori Riley) Starr Bissessar of East Windsor/Windsor Locks scores an extra point in a 38-0 win over SMSA in a girls flag football playoff game Saturday afternoon at Windsor High. (Photo by Lori Riley) Jose Ramos is the East Windsor/Windsor Locks coach; his daughter, Janiah Ramos, is a senior captain. He brought her to try the sport at the urging of his wife’s cousin a few years ago and now Janiah plays on the travel team started by Jubrey, the Lady Matrix. “She was a little timid the first year but after she learned what was going on, it was fine,” Ramos said. “My dad thought I wanted to start playing because I was talking about how excited I was for powder puff,” Janiah said. “It was kind of by accident. I started playing in a rec league. Then the travel team, Lady Matrix. I found out it was a big passion of mine. ‘I love the family feeling of it all.” The Panthers have 16 players and Ramos hopes that the success of the team and the increased exposure will get more girls to come out next year. “When you’re working with the girls, just seeing their confidence build – we do ladder drills, as they go through the ladder, the first week, they’re tripping and everything, then you get in there with them and say, ‘Look, I’ll do it too,’ and you see their confidence grow,” Ramos said. “Seeing the growth in the girls is amazing. It’s awesome.”