SUMMER PREPS: Basketball stars filter over to flag football for Trinity

By TIM GAYLE

It’s not the traditional way to start a new sport at a school, but Trinity can thank one of its senior students for launching the Wildcats’ new flag football program.

Emory Causey plays girls’ basketball with her sisters Lizzie and Ellie and the triplets used to play volleyball together as well. But after Emory quit the volleyball program following her sophomore season, she found herself bored last fall while waiting for the start of basketball season.  

“I was like, ‘what am I going to do now?’ I told my parents I really wanted to play flag football,” Causey said. “That’s when it was getting traction as a high school sport. They were like, ‘why don’t you do something about it?’”

She went to athletic director Brian Seymore’s office and made her sales pitch. Apparently, she was so convincing that Seymore couldn’t say no.

“She came to me and said, ‘Coach, what about flag football?’ I told her I thought we needed at least 14 to 16 players,” Seymore said. “And the next thing I know she’s got a list of more than 20. So I called the state and declared for the sport.”

Causey wasn’t through making demands, however.

“The girls went to Coach Seymore and said we’re starting a flag football team and Clinton is going to be our coach,” Trinity flag football coach Clinton Adams said. “I never agreed to it because I was still doing football at Pike Road. I was just starting to think about how much time football entails.”

As a result, Seymore got permission from the Alabama High School Athletic Association to start a flag football program and applied for grants from the National Football League, Adams gave up his job as a running backs coach at Pike Road and now will add flag football to a resume that includes strength and conditioning coach for female athletes and assistant coach on the girls’ basketball team and Causey will get to live out her dream of playing flag football in her senior season.

“We’re all super competitive,” she said. “We’re going to have girls on the team that have succeeded at a high level. I think the expectation, from the beginning, is to compete and if we find ourselves in a position where we have a little more success than people thought, I think that’ll be encouraging. But no matter what, the expectation from the beginning will be to compete and play our hardest. Whatever the outcome is, I think we’ll all be happy with it.”

Adams has not held official tryouts yet, relying on the players who signed up at Causey’s request. He said the biggest challenge is “having to figure out who fits the best parts, which will take some time because girls don’t understand the game of football, which they shouldn’t. So you’re having to go out there and teach them how to play and it’s going to take some time figuring out where they need to be.”

Another challenge is trying to attract players while not detracting from the championship-caliber volleyball program.

“That’s the one thing Emory said when she came to me was, ‘Coach, I’m not trying to take any player away from volleyball because we’ve got a good (volleyball) program here but the girls that are not playing volleyball, I want to encourage them to come out and help us play flag football,’” Seymore said.

“We’re not trying to battle with volleyball,” Adams said. “Our major sports need to be our major sports. But there are some athletic girls that could help me on the football field that are playing volleyball. I just want to be able to find enough girls that want to play flag football and not just have something that checks the box.”

Because the Wildcats fielded the sport in the middle of a two-year classification cycle, Trinity is not assigned to a region in Class 1A-5A and will not be eligible for the playoffs this season. However, the players will gain some valuable experience that will help next year’s team when it becomes eligible to compete for a state championship.  

“We want to go out and compete at a high level,” Seymore said. “I think flag football is something a lot more girls are getting involved with now, not just across the state of Alabama but across the nation. It’s a big deal. I’m glad we’re doing it.”

So is Causey, who can’t compete for a state championship this fall but she can compete in the school’s newest sport.

“It’s a good opportunity for all the girls at Trinity to have another opportunity to play together and succeed, to glorify the Lord,” Causey said. “I’m super thankful to Coach Seymore for giving us this opportunity and for Clinton to be willing to coach us and for a bunch of girls that are willing to play. Obviously, it’s scary to do something that you’ve never done.”