GRIDLEY >> Two years ago girls flag football became an official CIF sanctioned sport, and in the fall the first Northern Section team will join competition.

With no other Northern Section teams competing thus far, the Bulldogs of Gridley High will compete in the Sac-Joaquin Section’s Pioneer Valley League in Division III for the time being. They will compete against schools such as Wheatland, Lincoln, Center, Oakmont, Mira Loma and Colfax.

Their first game of the season will take place at 6 p.m. Sept. 8 at home against Center. Other home games include Sept. 15 against Wheatland, Sept. 24 against Marysville, Sept. 29 against Oakmont, Oct. 6 against Lincoln, Oct. 13 against Mira Loma and Oct. 15 against Colfax. A roster and schedule will be posted on MaxPreps as the season gets closer.

“I think I am the most excited about not just seeing more girls involved with sports, but seeing more female sports be supported by the community,” said Gridley High School athletic director Jessika Paiva. “It is going to be something new and exciting, so I’m thinking we’re going to have a good haul of community involvement coming and sitting in the stands. We’re talking to the cheer coach to see if we can get them out maybe once a week, and really give them an under-the-lights experience and put them in the spotlight.”

Games will be held Mondays and Wednesdays at 6 p.m., with the non-contact sport enabling teams to play 28 games in a season.

Former Gridley High School football coach John Cooprider, a teacher at Sycamore Middle School, has been named the head coach of the girls flag football team. Mike Campos, a former coach on Cooprider’s staff, will join Cooprider once again as his assistant coach. Together at tryouts Wednesday the coaching duo was running handoff drills, route running drills and teaching girls new techniques in the early days.

Cooprider is a Gridley High School alumnus who coached at Las Plumas before joining the Bulldogs in 2018. In the 2018-19 season Cooprider turned around a team that went 1-9 in 2017-18 and finished 8-4 in 2018-19. He recently took time away from coaching the boys and coached girls rugby before the pandemic while beginning a family, but said his son is a little older and it makes it a little easier to come back now.

“Cooprider is from Gridley, he grew up here, he’s very well known in the community, and he brings a lot of knowledge,” Paiva said. “He is awesome at creating relationships and developing culture and I think that came into play. His knowledge on athletics overall is helpful. He knows a lot of the parents, he knows a lot of the kids, and he has that report and it’s kind of a trusting person to start this program because you know what he’s going to bring to the table.”

When asked about what he was looking for at tryouts, Cooprider made it simple to the media and his players — attitude and effort.

“Those are the only two things we can control. If we can control those two things we’re going to do just fine,” Cooprider said. “You can’t work with any athlete for that matter without those two things.”

There will be 18-22 players on the roster and seven playing at a time, and just a varsity team at this time.

How it started

Talks for flag football in Gridley began in August 2024, when Northern Section commissioner Scott Johnson talked to athletic directors about the sport. The Sac-Joaquin Section is fully into it, and Paiva was interested in getting another girls sport up and going.

She debriefed her principal Rikki-lee Burresch about the conversation, and then learned that Simpson College in Redding had begun to offer scholarships to girls flag football athletes. That was a big turning point for the two female administrators. Still, they needed to bring it to the board for approval.

In March 2025 administration sent out a survey to see if girls would be interested in playing and got 90 girls saying they would. Paiva reached out to Johnson to discuss the process of adding a new sport. She learned it wasn’t going to be possible to start in the Northern Section, but Johnson connected her with Sac Joaquin Section assistant commissioner Jason Feuerbach.

From there the approval from the school board was needed, and once that was approved a head coach was hired.

Paiva said success in her mind would be a combination of things. Those include getting as many girls participating as possible, developing a community and culture of support around the players and fans watching. She said if you have those three things the wins take care of themselves.

“I think being able to develop that positive culture amongst the team will bleed out to community involvement, them having fun,” Paiva said. “A lot of people don’t want to play if they’re not enjoying it. We need to make it an exciting, fun, new experience and really give the athletes the power to establish what they want it to be known for.”

The future

Johnson said he’s excited to see Gridley “pilot the first (Northern Section) team, and as teams want to play we’ll see where it fits.”

Johnson said there have been talks about making flag football a spring sport, with field space a concern. Johnson said Northern Section teams such as Pleasant Valley, Chico High, Corning, Lassen and Red Bluff have field hockey in addition to up to three levels of boys football (freshman, JV and varsity), and practice and games are a concern with field space.

Johnson said as of early July he’s only had a few schools interested, but Williams is one he noted is interested.

“After this fall and Gridley pilots this thing we’ll see if anyone else is interested and maybe try to get it going in the spring,” Johnson said. “We’re going to let as many teams play that want to play, but we just haven’t had as many schools request flag football yet. We’ll get it going eventually, it’ll filter this way, but with our makeup of a section of 50 schools with less than 500 students they’re just not really interested in starting another sport right now.”