By Brittany Bowyer
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CAVE CREEK ­­— After much anticipation, hard work and commitment, Cactus Shadows High School will officially field a girls flag football team to take the gridiron this fall.

Currently the fastest growing sport in the country, flag football will make its Olympic debut at LA 2028 as more and more colleges are offering athletic scholarships for the sport.

"I'm excited to have the opportunity to play," said sophomore Lailah Dixon. "I've played basketball my whole life and this gives me something else to focus on."

Lailah, like many girls, are looking forward to the opportunity to not only show they can play the game of football, but to also participate in a sport that means so much to their families. 

According to Cactus Shadows Athletic Director Rob Gilmore, flag football was a sport both parents and students really wanted to see added, and the school has heard good community feedback to the news.

While girls flag football has only been an AIA-sanctioned sport for two seasons, Cactus Shadows was one of only eight schools in the 4A Division who didn’t already offer flag football. Gilmore said in the past, they were faced with trying to be fiscally responsible amid declining enrollment numbers, and the demand for the sport initially just wasn’t there. With time eventually came the demand, and eventually the rally for flag football became too strong to ignore.

After speaking with the district’s new Superintendent Nicole Regan, Gilmore said they came to the decision that they would go for it, but they’d need the support of the families and commuity members to trust in the process in order to get a team up and running by this year.

“[Regan] was completely in favor of it if we could financially find a way to make this work, do it,” Gilmore said.

He said they then held a parent information meeting in mid-June, created a budget of what they needed to fundraise, and pushed forward into the community to lean on them for support to meet their goal. At the meeting, they had over 40 girls show up who were interested in playing flag football, which will make it the biggest girls sport on campus.

“The deal was, we were $10,000 short and it would have been a negative equity sport in the school,” Assistant Coach Ashley Dixon said. “They gave us two weeks to come up with the money, and the community and everyone around us came together and got it done.”

In just a week and a half, the program had raised the necessary funds, allowing Gilmore to present to the school board for approval on Tuesday, July 14.

Lailah said as soon as they got approval, all the girls were going crazy talking about it. 

"We were all thrilled, a lot of us girls have been waiting for it to happen, so when we found out it got approved we couldn't stop talking about it," Lailah said. "Conversations about how we think the team will be, how practices and games will go and just how much fun it's going to be ... A few girls and I always talk about how excited we are to grow a sisterhood through this sport."

A big reason the school was able to add the sport was because of the efforts of Ashley Dixon, along with the support and help from her husband and head football coach Chris Dixon. The two of them led the fundraising charge, helping the program come up with the necessary cash in just nine days.

“We have the Dixon family, and I’ll speak to the family,” Gilmore said. “They’re employees of our school and our district, obviously, but they’re also parents in our community and they have children that will be playing on our team, so the Dixon family has two hats in the equation. They have been instrumental in the communication process of getting this going.”

He continued, “I am more than appreciative of Ashley and all that she’s done to get the messaging out, to get the word out, rally people. She’s just been tremendous.”

While Ashley has done a lot of the legwork to get the program up and running, she credits Chris for a lot of the work he’s already put in with the kids.

“My husband knows he’s not gonna be the coach, but he’s still out there in the mornings with these girls at 6 a.m. until somebody gets hired so they’re up to speed and ready to go in two weeks,” Ashley said.

“It’s only been a few girls, and we randomly meet up, but they’re starting to get it,” Chris said. He continued, “I’m here to help. I love the girls, I love the game.”

"It just shows he really cares about us and about the sport," Lailah added. 

“Chris Dixon is a phenomenal football coach,” Gilmore said. “We are incredibly lucky to have Coach Dixon as our coach, and our community gravitates towards him.”

According to Gilmore, the team will be independent this year and won’t play in a conference. The reasoning for this is because conference schedules are made in two-year blocks, and they were just done last year. Gilmore says because of being an independent school this year, they can be more flexible with their scheduling.

Gilmore says a group of individuals are now meeting in order to determine who they believe will be the best fit to run the flag football program this fall. According to Ashley, she’s been asked several times to take the reins as the head coach. However, she says her plate is already too full to add on all the responsibilities of a head coach.

“My husband is the varsity coach for the boys,” Ashley said. “We can’t have two parents gone after school all day, especially with 10 kids.”

Ashley said she wants this program to grow to the popularity level of boys football, and believes they need a coach who can properly invest the time and energy into what they need to not only grow, but flourish. Since she can’t be the head coach, she has agreed to sit on the review board to help field the search for the program’s first-ever head coach, along with husband Chris.

Ashley says she knows it's been a rough few years for the Cave Creek school district amid school closures, resignations and teachers riffed, so she hopes the community can find a bright spot in the addition of the new falg football team.

“This is the first positive thing we’ve seen in a year, so I’m hoping this helps build the whole school year out,” Ashley said. “I think it’s going to help build the community at Cactus Shadows and kind of finally give the girls a bigger stage.”

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.