SIERRA VISTA, Ariz. (KGUN) — At the beginning of the school year, Buena High School expanded their athletics department by adding a flag football team. This comes two years after the Arizona Interscholastic Association added flag football for girls to Arizona high school sports.
“It's just so much fun to be able to play a sport that we love, and we just have fun on the field,” said senior quarterback, Aryanna Garcia.
The fun they’re having has lead the Colts to a winning record in their first year, which is something no one, including athletic director Cole Colvin, saw coming when the team started almost two months ago.
“You couldn't ask for a better start with the amount of kids that have come out (and) the excitement that they've had,” he said.
Colvin says most of the Southern Arizona teams joined this year, while most of the Phoenix-area schools that have a team, are in their second year.
"Being in Sierra Vista, having to drive hours, we needed to wait (until) some of the schools from Tucson started to have (teams), or else we would have been in Phoenix...every day,” Colvin said.
More than 60 girls tried out for the team. Thirty made the varsity squad. The school said they would have had a junior varsity team, but there aren't many programs in Southern Arizona.
"I think what really surprised me was the amount that did come out and the amount that stuck with it," Colvin said. "They're friends, but they're also out there just having fun.”
Almost all of the players play other sports for Buena, but have never played football before August.
"(There have been) a lot of up and downs that we've gone through, that I've gone through personally, but for learning every day so we're just going to get better and better,” Garcia said.
Freshman, Deztany Toyota-Villabos, is the only one on the team with experience and is helping her teammates learn the game.
"They caught on pretty quick and started like helping each other with stuff that we needed to, and keeping all the energy up,” she said.
Senior, Aubrey Travis, says practicing almost every day, for three hours, is giving the team confidence.
"Our biggest goal is to just win each game day by day, and to go with that,” she said.
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Alexis Ramanjulu is a reporter in Cochise County for KGUN 9. She began her journalism career reporting for the Herald/Review in Sierra Vista, which she also calls home. Share your story ideas with Alexis by emailing alexis.ramanjulu@kgun9.com or by connecting on Facebook.
