Girls Flag Football Continues to Dominate the Field

Brady Silberfein scores a touchdown.Two years ago, the New York NFL teams, Giants, Jets and Bills came together to start funding a league for high school aged girls to play flag football. The impetus was to open the game to girls and address fears about injuries and concussions from contact sports. Flag football is played with seven players wearing flags on their waists. To “tackle” a player, you must pull their flag, rather than pulling them down. Scoring is similar to regular football - however there are no field goals and to score an extra point, a team must convert a two-yard pass after the touchdown. From the sidelines, the game looks far safer than regular tackle football and we only observed one minor injury in the game this week.

When the Section 1 League began in 2022, Scarsdale quickly joined. Despite being a relatively new team for the school, they reached the section finals in 2022 and 2023. This year’s Girls Flag Football team has quickly become one the school’s best with a record of 12-6. The team is led by Head Coach Thomas Newkirck and Captains Ivy Boockvar and Emilia Gomez, both seniors at Scarsdale High School. According to Senior player Katerina Rvacheva, "Everyone on the team is very close with one another, allowing us to be braver and stronger on the field, as trust in teammates allows everyone to exceed their potential. We always keep a positive attitude, not letting any mistakes get to our head and keeping a fresh perspective at every game." 

On April 29th, the girls faced North Rockland High School at home where they put on an incredible performance. On both sides of the ball, they outplayed North Rockland with a final score of 28 to 0.

On the first drive, it was clear that this offense was able to move down the field with #10 Ivy Boockvar throwing deep passes to #12 Seka Silvjanovski. Additionally, the two connected for a short touchdown pass to put the Raiders up 7 to 0. The girls were able to quickly stop North Rockland’s first possession and capitalized with a punt return touchdown by #4 Lilly Tessler.

Throughout the first half, #19 Leah Brown was unstoppable on the defensive end where she pulled the flag of almost every running play North Rockland ran, which were the majority of their plays. Due to the strong stops of the defense, which included turnovers on downs, the offense was able to march down the field without any issues. Ivy showed her ability to improvise in the pocket where she would scramble and gain good yardage. Furthermore she connected to #11 Brady Silberfein for some passes on the fourth offensive drive which ended in them connected for a short touchdown pass. Ivy Boockvar in the pocket.

By far, the most electric play of the game was a flea flicker from Ivy to a receiver who threw a deep pass to Brady who caught it at the 2 yard line. As a result they drive ended with a touchdown pass to #5 Naomi Fischer, making the score 28 to 0.

The second half began and the defense continued to allow almost no first downs by great tackling from Leah Brown, #13 Drew Frank and #2 Gia Asen. The game was concluded halfway through the second half due to the rain and thunder we’d all see and hear later.

The team played a nearly flawless game where they controlled the pace on both sides of the ball. Girls Flag Football has a bright future ahead with now an overall record of 13-6.

Team huddle