ROSEMOUNT, Minn. — It was during his team's first playoff game last season that Rosemount head football coach Jeff Erdmann realized the opportunity he had sitting right in front of him.
"I though, 'What can I do to enhance that?'" he said.
Erdmann started organizing a girls-only flag football league at Rosemount High School back in February, and the Go Girl Flag Football league started this summer, in early June.
"We have six teams in our older division and 10 in our lower," Erdmann said.
The older division has athletes from almost every other sport at the school, including Ava Whelan, a rising senior on the girls lacrosse team, which finished third at state this year.
"There is so much talent here, you'll come watch and be like 'oh my gosh,' and the boys refereeing, they're impressed, they're like 'oh my gosh, she's insane,'" she said. "This has been growth for us, now that we're out here playing, we've gotten so much better, we want to keep playing more and more competitive."
The league has no coaches, something Erdmann said he did by design to keep outside forces from influencing the girls' experience of the game.
"We have a GA – a graduate assistant position open on our team, Erdmann said. "I'm hoping that's the direction that it goes. I am hoping that we can grow the interest and level of the game and get more of them involved ... I think that would be a great place to take the sport of football."
"I like the concept of it because I feel like that maybe girls who wanted to play were afraid of playing because of the boys," Emma Ebling, who not only plays on the basketball and softball team, but Erdmann says is also the best quarterback in the league.