New girls' flag football team brings athletes together

For Burnsville High School seniors Tori Gromacki, Avery Krumwiede and Izzi Vohnoutka, most of their experience with football consists of watching NFL games and playing in the Powder Puff game during Homecoming week. 

That’s changed over the last few weeks as they’ve served as captains of the inaugural BHS girls' flag football team. The Minnesota Vikings launched a girls’ flag football league last year and it has expanded to 51 schools across the state, including BHS, this spring. Tori, Avery and Izzi lead a group of 43 players who will compete in an eight-game schedule across the varsity, junior varsity and B squad levels. The three captains and many of their teammates have competed in other sports for the Blaze.

“It’s definitely a very cool experience seeing everyone from each individual sport come together because we have a lot of athletes at the school,” Tori said. “It’s fun to unite and see each other work together.”

“A lot of students that are in college now wanted to have a flag football team, so it’s really nice that our senior year gets to be the first year,” Izzi added.

Ryan King, a physical education and health teacher at BHS, serves as head coach. He reached out to the Vikings last summer about starting a team and began informing students about the opportunity while leading the Blaze Performance summer strength program.

“It’s been great to see the buy-in and the interest level in the kids that are coming up, and special to see the kids in a different lens because this is something that’s new to everybody,” King said. “It’s been special to see them understand that, take it and run with it.”

As the team continues to prepare for its first games against DeLaSalle and Two Rivers on April 27, King is seeing his players’ athletic skills translate onto the football field.

“It’s fun to go from watching them compete in basketball or volleyball and now flipping the script to see them running around catching passes and throwing the ball with pretty good velocity and accuracy on it. They’re looking really athletic and really fast,” he said.

Still, learning the game and having fun remain the primary goals for the first-year program.

“We want to bring energy and make it a really fun first year and go on to building the program from there,” King said.

The players are looking forward to seeing how all their work in practice comes together on gameday.

“We’re all learning, so we’re definitely excited to see all the pieces of the game come together and see what we can do,” Avery said.

“It’ll be cool doing something no one’s seen before,” Izzi added. 

The BHS girls’ flag football team plays its first home game against Richfield at 4 p.m. on May 4 at Pates Stadium. The team then takes on DeLaSalle at 5 p.m.