How flag football helped reenergize a veteran

In the spring of 2020, Doug Caines was burned out and completed teaching football.

“The COVID season probably broke me,” he said.

He had been head coach at Dos Pueblos High since 2018. He had been head coach at Santa Barbara from 2012-14. He remained at Dos Pueblos as a media arts trainer and centered on his own children.

Then, in 2023, he was approached about turning into the ladies’ flag football coach in the first season of the game. It modified his life.

“Honestly, I’ve never had this much fun coaching football,” he said. “Man is it fun. The girls are just coachable and want to play and most are other athletes first.”

That feeling of enjoyable, gamers wanting to be taught and dad and mom watching to benefit from the sport instead of worrying about school recruiters best describes the third season of flag football. Everyone realizes this purity in all probability gained’t last for long. Players are already getting supplied flag football scholarships to schools. High faculties have began to search out gamers.

Yet for now, the members are having fun with just having the possibility to play a sport that used to be reserved for boys.

“Before freshman year, I had never played and never heard of it,” said star Dos Pueblos receiver/defensive back Brooklyn Hendricks, whose father, George, is head baseball coach and also an assistant flag coach.

Dos Pueblos head coach Doug Caines, heart, talks with his gamers during halftime.

(Michael Owen Baker/For The Times)

She was a journey ball participant for years in softball. Her dad and mom spent heaps of time and money taking her to video games around the nation. Guess what has occurred in her junior 12 months of high college?

“Softball was my best sport, but flag football honestly is my best,” she said. “To get a scholarship offer is crazy.”

Dos Pueblos is 18-2 and half of a strong group of groups from Ventura County and the Santa Barbara space prepared to problem the highly effective groups in Orange County. Dos Pueblos’ took 18-1 Orange Lutheran to additional time before dropping.

“That was the most intense game I’ve played in,” Hendricks said. “It was such a battle back and forth. It was so much fun.”

Besides Hendricks, who has more than 30 interceptions in her flag football profession, quarterback Kacey Hurley has been a key contributor. Last season Hurley was the middle snapping the ball to the quarterback. Now she’s the one firing spirals, with 49 landing passes so far.

The common season ends on Oct. 15. The playoffs are Oct. 21, 25, 28 and Nov. 1 with the championship video games on Nov. 8.

Caines has been revitalized and rejuvenated.

“It’s been magical,” he said. “The first year was so fun. No expectations. Everything was new — the first game, the first touchdown, the first interception. We’ve been able to keep that going.”

Based on Caines’ teaching expertise, a real pattern in the approaching years may very well be veteran 11-man football coaches switching to flag football to get back to the times of gamers studying from scratch and appreciating every second at observe and video games.

Meanwhile, the gamers will keep having unusual dances before and after video games, making use of eyeblack prefer it’s make-up and, most of all, having enjoyable enjoying a sport that isn’t their main one but may very well be in the future.

“This team has great chemistry,” Hendricks said. “There’s never any drama. We have a good set of coaches, We focus on having more fun. We love a win. That’s great. But it’s more of a family.”