Football Fever: Red Devils enjoy first IHSA flag football season

By Jeff Vorva

Destynee McCoy said she will remember the good times.

The Illinois High School Association sanctioned girls flag football, and this fall was the inaugural season for teams across the state.

McCoy, a senior cornerback for Hinsdale Central, and her teammates may have suffered through a 2-9 record, but the Red Devils were happy to have a chance to be out on the field playing a sport usually played by male athletes.

Oh, and they had fun, too.

“We would roll around the turf laughing after we just lost,” McCoy said. “It’s been amazing – I had a lot of friends on the team this year. We have our really, really fun moments.”

McCoy spent her freshman year at Hinsdale Central but moved to Georgia for two years before coming back here for her senior year. She said she played flag football in Georgia and was happy to see Illinois hosting the sport this year.

Senior wide receiver Presley Mulligan played basketball for two years, and she golfs, but not with the school team. For her senior year, she wanted to get back into the swing of school sports and tried out for flag football. “I like being active,” she said. “It was new, and I had nothing else going on this year. Friends were doing it, and I thought it would be really fun. It’s been really fun despite all of the losses. I still enjoy every game on the field.”

The Red Devils opened the season losing the first five games before a 20-18 road triumph over Fenton on Sept. 30. The celebration for that historic win was not over the top. “We kept it modest,” Mulligan said. “But we were obviously excited. It felt good to win one.”

The winning didn’t stop there. There was one more triumph to come, and that happened on Oct. 7

The Red Devils, who were the 18th-seeded team in the 20-team Perspectives/Leadership Sectional, traveled to Chicago and knocked off 14th-seeded Julian 34-12 at historic Gately Stadium. The season ended two nights later with a 28-0 home loss to third-seeded St. Laurence.

Nick Gebhart is the coach, and he has enjoyed plenty of success coaching the boys at Hinsdale Central, Willowbrook, and the closed Driscoll Catholic, which is a program that won eight state championships.

For now, wins and losses will have to take a back seat to learning and development. “I don’t care about the record,” he said. “If you put in your work and do your job, the record will come. If you coach right and work on the game’s technical aspects and put people in the right positions, you can get the most out of your players.”

Gebhart said the program drew 36 athletes this year and hopes to boost that up in the coming years. Because facility use is at a premium, 5:30 a.m. practices have been the norm. “Some mornings, it’s been hard, but it’s worth it,” McCoy said. “It’s nice that my teammates are the first people I see every day.”

“Once you get into the routine, it’s not bad,” Gebhart said. “They are able to get good parking spots on the street.”

Now that the first season is in the books, Gebhart is looking to keep building the program, citing returning players and some promising grade school players who attended Red Devil camps. “It was a heck of a season,” he said. “We started something, and we’ll go from there. We hope to eventually get 60 to 80 girls to come out. It’s getting to be a big sport. They are going to have flag football in the Olympics in 2028. Anyone could have a shot at that. You never know. But you have to have them buy into that.”