Story By: Sarah Turner
Everyone knows fall Fridays are for high school football.
But Thursday nights? They now belong to the girls.
Flag football is currently the fastest growing sport for girls in the country, and the Spain Park Jaguars are already making their mark.
The program has only been around for five years, but Spain Park has quickly become one of Alabama’s top teams. The 2025 squad finished 15-5, falling just short in the state semifinals in a heartbreaking 20-19 loss to Vestavia Hills. A year earlier, the Jaguars were state runner-ups after dropping the championship game to powerhouse Central Phenix City.
Leading the program since day one is head coach Carmen Starr, who has worked at Spain Park for 17 years.
“I am the wife of our girls soccer coach, so kind of always been the coach’s wife and not the coach,” said Starr.
But her love for football started long before the Jaguars ever took the field.
Starr said that passion came from her grandmother.
“She was just so in love with that sport, and I just kind of fell into it from her,” Starr said. She said she always wished she could’ve played the game herself.
So when Alabama announced that girls flag football would become a sanctioned high school sport, and Spain Park planned to start a team, Starr immediately knew she wanted to lead it.
“I told our athletic director at the time, ‘That’s me, that’s the sport I want to coach,” Starr said. “So once that announcement came out I grabbed hold of it and ran with it.”
When the first team formed in 2021, Starr had no idea what to expect, or even how many girls would show up to try out.
Would they be athletes? Non-athletes? Girls who simply liked football?
The answer turned out to be a little bit of everything.
“I think that was what was really the neatest thing to me,” said Starr. “To see girls who play softball or basketball or soccer or run track or play lacrosse, or have never done a sport ever, and just wanted to come out and try something new.”
With players coming from so many different backgrounds, Starr quickly realized most of them were learning football from scratch. Growing up in Alabama, she assumed many would already know the basics.
“That wasn’t the case,” Starr said. “So you had to get really basic and foundational with learning the game.”
Senior Rory Peyton knows that journey well. She was part of the very first team, what Starr calls the program’s “original gamers.”
“I got an email from Coach Carmen when I was in 8th grade,” said Peyton. “I was always intrigued by it, I was just kind of scared.”
Peyton and a friend eventually decided to try out together.
“It was like the best idea I’ve ever had,” she said.
Now Peyton is preparing to take her game to the next level and will most likely continue playing flag football at North Alabama, an opportunity that didn’t exist for girls just a few years ago.
Another senior, Ja’Skylar Simpkins, has already secured her next step. She has committed to Wallace State Community College, which will begin competing in the Alabama Community College Conference’s new flag football division during the 2025-26 academic year.
With Simpkins’ commitment, she becomes the fourth Spain Park player to move on to play at the next level.
The Jaguars’ success has even caught national attention.
Their October win over Prattville was featured in an NBC Sports segment that aired before this year’s Super Bowl.
The piece was produced by longtime NFL journalist Peter King, who spent the game on the sideline for his first time covering flag football.
During the game, Peyton intercepted a pass and returned it for a touchdown, igniting the Spain Park sideline, and even surprising King.
“You would’ve thought it was his daughter playing,” Starr said. “He was so excited. He was like, ‘This is the best football game I’ve seen in I don’t know how long.’”
King continued checking in with Starr throughout the season, regularly texting the team to congratulate them on wins.
“That was really neat that it wasn’t just kind of like a box check type thing,” said Starr. “It was something that he was really vested in.”
For the players, seeing themselves featured on that stage was a surreal moment.
“That was really interesting for me, seeing myself on TV like that,” said Simpkins. “It showed that there are people around the world that see us as a team and an actual sport.”
And the future of the program may be even brighter.
Freshman Chenelle Hunter has been playing flag football since second grade, and Starr believes she could be one of the sport’s rising stars.
“She will be an Olympic athlete. There’s no question,” Starr said. “You watch her play and it’s just one of those kind of once-in-a-career athletes that you get to coach.”
Hunter has watched the sport grow in real time, and with it, the respect for the game.
“Most people think ‘Oh you play flag football, that’s not real football,” Hunter said. “But now they’re kind of saying they’re making it a real sport.”
In 2021, the first year girls flag football was sanctioned in the state, just 43 schools started programs. Today, that number has grown to nearly 150.
While the opportunities for players continue to expand, Starr says the most important part of coaching goes far beyond football.
“I’m not doing it right if I’m not preparing them for everything but the game of flag football,” said Starr.
Watching players grow from eighth graders into confident young women, she says, is the most rewarding part of the job.
“Yes, it’s awesome to win, it’s a lot of fun to win, and we certainly have more fun winning, but it’s about so much more than that,” Starr said.
The Jaguars will be back on the field this fall as they try to make another run at the state title game beginning in August, and they’ll continue to push this growing sport forward.
Vallo Vision News 