Redwood Girls' Flag Football Earns Top Seed in Debut Season

Redwood High School's girls' flag football team is making history in Visalia, and it is doing so in the program's very first season. The Rangers head into the Central Section playoffs as the number one seed, in part because there was no earlier history at the school to measure them against.

Visalia Unified School District added flag football as a CIF-sanctioned sport for the first time this fall. Three of the district's four schools qualified for the postseason, a strong showing for a brand-new offering.

Redwood closed out the regular season with a 17-1 record and 12 consecutive wins. The top seed also earned the team a home game to open the playoffs, and the Rangers won it.

"Our first season and just coming out hard the whole season, getting the number one seed, getting to play our first playoff game home and then winning is pretty big," said quarterback Emma Crisp.

Linebacker Tori Ochoa said representing the new sport carries special meaning. "First-ever flag football girls in our district and it's a new sport, so getting to play our first game at our school is something really special," she said. She added that it has been fun and exciting to try a new sport and find themselves on a team full of natural athletes.

Coach Michael Wright II credited the district for backing the program, particularly a women's sport. "Our district support of sports, and especially female sport in this case, has been awesome, and we're really grateful for it," he said.

Wright said the focus has been on improvement rather than results alone. "For us, it's always been about our process of getting better, and they've really embraced that," he said. "I hope they carry that through everything they do in life."

The season has given girls in the South Valley a new way to show their talents on the football field. It has also set a standard for the Rangers who come after them. Ochoa noted that younger players will now know the opportunity exists. "They know in the future, they could be able to play," she said. "For us, we didn't have that like opportunity, and I think it'll be really big and we'll get better each year because of the training when you're younger."

With the playoffs underway, Redwood's players have already put their names into school lore, and the district has plenty to be proud of in what these athletes have accomplished simply by taking the field this season.