On Sept. 18, 2024, West Texas A&M University students gathered at Buffalo Sport Park to play football together. Through WT’s intramural sports program, student-athletes and football enthusiasts have been able to form flag football leagues, allowing everyone to play, regardless of experience or gender.
“I think it’s great,” Joe Buckley, WT’s intramural coordinator, said. “We can get dual participation. Wanting to work with each other in an athletic setting.”
Flag football player and WT student Colton Mellot also claims to be enjoying the dynamic of getting to play football and compete with all contenders.
“It’s really cool,” Mellot said. “It just brings a different variety of the game to get all your friends involved. You just meet a lot of new people.”
Aside from the benefit of being able to play with all of his friends, Mellot also pointed out how flag football helped him as a student.
“It’s a good way to get away from your class load,” Mellot said. “And a good time to hang out with your friends, especially if you played sports in high school.”
WT emphasizes student safety when playing flag football, and employees like Buckley work to ensure the games are as safe as possible.
“People have had a lot of awareness to where we’re not having any sort of collisions,” Buckley said. “It’s flag football. “It’s just people going up for a ball at the same time…”
However, referees like Brennan Hugley still need to ensure everyone follows the rules and plays safely.
“There are things that are different in flag football than regular football,” Hugley said. “That make sure people don’t get injured and people are having fun because that’s what it’s all about.”
Buckley made a similar observation and emphasized his plan to expand the number of officials to keep the games safe. He was even willing to discuss his plans for protecting students via solid officiating.
“I have officials,” Buckley said. “We’ll figure out how to officiate it. Open to ideas. I’m not super rigid into what we’re doing right now.”
Buckley also speculated on what he could do to make the games more popular to WT students, especially WT’s female football fans.
“I wish the woman versus woman participation was a little bit higher,” Buckley said.“This year, we had a really hard time getting enough teams for the seven-on-seven girls flag football”
However, the recent announcement that the next Olympics would feature flag football made Buckley feel optimistic.
“Because it’s going to be an Olympic sport in [20]28 hopefully we can create some energy behind it,” Buckley said. “It’s becoming a bigger thing.”
Whether that will pan out or not remains to be seen. However, one thing is undeniable: For a few nights a week, students from all over WT can play football together.
