Just a few months after they began lobbying with the Boulder Valley School District to start a new girls flag football team, a small group of Monarch students and their parents received the email they had been waiting for.

Last week, in correspondence from its director of athletics and activities Harry Waterman, BVSD announced that it would be pursuing a district-wide, CHSAA-sanctioned program for the upcoming fall season. It will be hosted at Monarch and will welcome girls from surrounding districts — including the St. Vrain Valley School District — if they don’t have their own team.

Emily Stites, who had advocated for the move alongside her freshman daughter Addison, couldn’t believe it at first.

“I had to read through it a couple times to make sure that I was reading what I was reading, and that they were really doing it for the fall,” Emily said. “It’s obviously a good surprise and we’re excited about what’s in store, but I think, instead of being done, now the real work begins to get everything set up to make us a CHSAA sport and competitive for the fall.”

The Stites and fellow Monarch students Avery Kennedy, Ginger Milot and Abbey Elalouf were the driving force behind persuading the district that it needed to host the sport. Until last week, they felt they had only been met with resistance from BVSD, which earlier had cited concerns to them over the budget, shared field space and the level of interest among girls in the district.

Waterman said that core group of ladies helped convince him and the rest of the district’s athletic directors, who held a meeting earlier this month to discuss the matter.

Emily Stites estimated that roughly 20 prospective players showed up that day to plead their case.

“The girls were very influential,” Waterman said. “We had good interest at our interest meeting. We had individual meetings at our schools, and now we’re looking at somewhere between, we believe, 30 and 40 girls that are really showing a passion and an interest for it. So that kind of changed our thought process. The district has been very generous to provide support.”

According to Waterman, the athletic directors across BVSD began discussions surrounding the sport last spring but noted that there was “minimal interest” at the time. They reconvened in January and decided to send out an interest survey among their member schools to spark the dialogue once again.

That Google document ultimately yielded 44 names from Monarch (25), Boulder (eight), Centaurus (six), Fairview (three), Broomfield (one) and Nederland (one). They ranged in age from eighth graders to high school juniors.At about the same time, some of the Monarch girls basketball parents and players began to informally organize. Milot, a sophomore, said that she and the others gauged the level of interest from their friends and peers by word of mouth.

“I have always been interested in flag and tackle football,” Milot said. “It is such an amazing sport, and I have always thought it to be unfair that boys are able to play football but we are not. I think that having a flag football team would be a great chance for girls to learn a new sport and meet new people in the process.”

Flag football just ended its first CHSAA-sanctioned season in the fall, with 62 schools across two classifications stepping up to bat. Before that, it was a two-year pilot program consisting of 51 teams. Mountain View, which had players from SVVSD, won the first Class 4A title, while Mountain Vista took home the crown in 5A last December.

Kennedy is a junior at Monarch who relished playing for the powder puff team this year.

“I want to start a flag football team because, as a female athlete, I have always been interested in breaking barriers between male and female athletics,” she said. “I feel like flag football is a great way to do so, as it creates opportunities for girls to play a sport that is traditionally male-dominated.”

Now, the ball is in Monarch athletic director Eric Gustafson’s court to start the process of putting a team together. If the Coyotes hope to field a squad by this fall, they’ll have to hire a coach, find a practice field and order uniforms, among other logistics.

“As a school athletic director and a member of CHSAA and also a member of BVSD schools, I don’t just make these decisions in a vacuum,” Gustafson explained. “I’ve got to have CHSAA permission to join a league or to become involved mid-cycle, as it is in this case. I’ve got to have district permission and support. With great thanks to both CHSAA and the BVSD school district, those things fell into place for me.

“This is happening quick,” he added. “If we’re going to play next fall, competitively, in a CHSAA-sanctioned league, we’re going to have to start doing some preparation and organization now … so we’re going to have to get going this summer. We’re going to have a learning curve to some extent as far as what are the rules and how do we play this.”

Waterman looks forward to seeing where this journey will take BVSD.

“It’s just an exciting new opportunity for our girls to take advantage of an emerging sport across the country, but particularly our most recent CHSAA sport that’s starting up,” he said.

“Honestly, it’s the girls’ passion that has created this opportunity.”