By Brittany Bowyer
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How long have you been the head coach for Horizon’s flag football team?
“This is my first year here. I also coach at Ottawa in Surprise for college, and I’ve coached flag football for about 10 years.”

Who are your top returning players?
“Probably Charley Zamorano, she’ll be a senior. She’s actually committed to go D-I for Lacrosse. Sydney Puma, who’s gonna be our quarterback, and then Arabella Wickstrom, who’s gonna be kind of our Swiss Army Knife being safety, center, wide receiver, kicker, punter, all those things. She’s gonna fill a lot of roles.”

Who are some of the newcomers we can expect to see make an impact this year?
“Camille Newman, she plays soccer here, but it’s her first year playing flag. She’ll be a rusher and running back. We expect her to do a lot of good things at rusher for us. Nikki Slager, who’s a basketball player here, she’s a senior. She’ll be a rusher and kind of like a slot wide receiver for us. And then Sonja Ritter, who’s gonna be a wide receiver for us.”

What do you think your team’s best attribute will be this season?
“I think it’ll be our toughness. Our whole thing here is that we’re going to play with effort and be tough, and never get outworked on a football field. So hopefully if we don’t have more talent than the other team we can outwork the other team to come away with some wins.”

What are your goals for this team?
“You know, it’s the second year that Horizon’s been in the AIA. I know they played in a spring league before that. Our goal is to build a program here, and to build some place that girls in Scottsdale want to come when they’re in eighth grade and making that decision. That they see that we take flag football seriously, that we put in the work and we’re ready to win and compete with teams in the East and West Valley.”

Is there anything you and your team are looking forward to this season?
“We’re looking forward to our first game. We’re ready to get out there, we’ve been practicing since July. We’re ready to get out there and actually play against someone. Whoever that is, we’ll be ready.”

Is there anything else about Horizon Flag Football you’d like to add?
“I think that we have a great group of girls here. Girls that are willing to put in the work who maybe have been underdeveloped in previous years but are really trying to learn the game, be coached up, learn new things from our offensive and defensive coaches, and we’re looking forward to a good season.”

Brittany Bowyer is a Report for America corps member, covering sports for Independent Newsmedia in Arizona. Report for America places talented journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and regions.