Middle School Athletics Flag Football Update (3-16-23)
Hello Parents/Guardians,
Thank you for your interest and patience with the SDUSD Middle School Athletics (MSA) spring flag football season. In preparation for next week’s tryouts, here are a few suggestions for student-athletes:
- Bring plenty of water
- Wear comfortable athletic attire
- Rubber cleats (no metal) are suggested but not mandatory
- Mouthpiece is suggested but not mandatory
Day 1 of tryouts is always the busiest with checking in the student-athletes which will cut into instruction time. Please remember these tryouts are closed to the parents/guardians as the coaches have a limited amount of time with the athletes.
Thank you for your understanding.
Please see the message below from Scott Giusti, Director of Athletics for the San Diego Unified School District:
This email is being sent to the email addresses that were submitted via the Google Form application for student sign-ups. We will also post the information on the SDUSD Middle School Athletics website.
Dear Parents/Guardians and Students of Middle School Athletics teams,
Your school site has enough students to form a team this spring season in either boys flag football or girls flag football (or both teams).
Tryouts will begin next week on your school’s assigned days.
This is the schedule that our coaches have committed to for the first two weeks of the season that include tryouts/practice: 2022-23 MSA Spring Flag Football Practice Schedule
There will be two weeks of tryouts/practice where students are still able to sign-up and participate before coaches need to submit a final roster to the Athletics Office.
Here is a current update on where the two programs (boys and girls flag football) are:
- Girls: We are seeking coach candidates that are not only interested in coaching our girls middle school flag football team, but could also potentially coach the newly approved CIF sport of girls flag football at the high school level next year. We are extremely excited to see this program grow and to look at the development of our girls middle school flag football teams as a key component to growing the sport at the high school level. We are developing the program but may adjust some things once CIF releases their official rules.
- Boys:The high school football coaching staffs of your local high school football teams will be coming down to teach/coach flag football as a part of our middle school programs. I would currently consider this a more established program based on that experience.
Flag football will definitely be different from any sport that we have previously fielded with larger team rosters, more teams, higher expectations for students to commit to practices, possible time changes for practice, as well as some practices possibly being moved on certain dates to the high school, etc. The game itself will not be a traditional flag football game.
This will be the single largest sports season we have had. We’ve had over 2000 students sign up for flag football and this allows us to have 46 middle school flag football teams.
As we have looked at sign-ups, we’ve noticed that some of the school site boys programs have extremely large sign-ups so I ask parents to really consider if their student can make the commitment to practice twice a week and commit to two games on Saturdays at high school sites. In the spring we realize that students have multiple options for their child’s health and athletic well-being. Many students participate on outside organizations in the spring seasons and while I appreciate that, I also would hate to have a child not make a team because a spot was taken by a student who may have been more talented but can’t actually make the necessary commitment.
I understand that communication with you is critical and until teams are finalized and coaches take over the responsibility of communication with their teams, the communication about matters such as weather conditions/cancellations/game schedules, etc. has to go through our office.
We will update districtwide changes/expectations/rules/etc. on our Middle School Athletics district website located at https://sdusdathletics.com/middle-schools/
Lonnie Jones, our SDUSD Middle School Athletics Coordinator, will be emailing your Middle School Site Principals with the name for the coach(es) at your site as well as other information about the upcoming season so they are informed, but if you have specific questions, please refer those to Mr. Jones at Ljones3@sandi.net
We appreciate your participation in Middle School Athletics and look forward to our most successful season yet. Thanks.
