Excitement has been building over the last couple months for high school flag football teams around the state as we are less than a month away from the inaugural Corky Kell + Dave Hunter Classic Flag Football Tournament on June 19th.
The tournament will be held at West Forsyth and will feature over 25 teams from around the state of Georgia.
This year’s tournament was implemented as an extension of the Corky Kell + Dave Hunter Classic, and features some of the top flag football talent in the state as they will face off in multiple games to get the players exposed to college scouts and fans.
The growth of flag football has been exponential over the last couple of years as the sport was sanctioned by the GHSA in 2020 with the help of the Atlanta Falcons and the Arthur Blank Foundation has continued to grow ever since. Many had been calling for the GHSA to sanction the sport and since 2020, high school flag football in Georgia has reached new heights.
“We were getting so much interest in it,” said GHSA Assistant Executive Director Ernie Yarbrough. “We saw that Florida had started it and then quite honestly the Atlanta Falcons contacted us and let us know the level of participation and partnership they wanted to play in it, and it was pretty hard to say no once we saw their interest and that we were going to have a terrific partner in sanctioning flag football.”
According to Yarbrough, every year the GHSA does an “Emerging Sport Survey” and when they did the survey before the 2020 season, flag football was an overwhelming favorite in terms of adding a new sport. The enormous amount of support from schools, parents, and the Atlanta Falcons created the perfect storm for flag football to be recognized as a sport by the GHSA.
The fans had been calling for flag football to be sanctioned and after multiple years of support as a club sport. The immense support students, parents and fans around the state have shown for the sport ever since it has been recognized by the state has turned flag football into a huge success for all parties involved.
“I think that it has been off the charts to be honest,” said Yarbrough. “We have even heard that the first year that we broadcasted the championship on GPB, their program director said ‘you would not believe the calls we are getting from people, we have callers saying that this is their favorite sport to watch. It has been off the charts the way that spectators, student-athletes, and schools have embraced the sport and it’s obvious by the growth that we are getting.”
Since it was sanctioned in 2020, the overwhelming amount of support for the sport has made a large impact on the programs who have become pioneers for flag football, getting these players and coaches recognized for their hard work they put in throughout the season.
”It was a club sport. Kind of a pilot program the year before it was sanctioned and we had Gwinnett County schools primarily were the first ones to jump on the pilot program,” said Yarbrough. “Then the first year we sanctioned it we had 88 schools, divided into two divisions and we had two championships. Then last year we were up to 224 schools, three championships and this coming season we have 270 schools and four divisional championships. That tells you the growth and we haven’t tapped much of the state south of Macon.”
After the addition of close to 200 teams to flag football, the overwhelming amount of support has allowed for the sport to grow in ways Yarbrough, and fans around the state couldn’t have dreamed.
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