PHOENIX – When Sierra and Sophia Smith graduated from Chandler Hamilton High School, they raised a simple but important question for their athletic futures.
“What comes next?”
The Smiths had excelled at flag football for the Huskies. After they graduated they knew they wanted to continue the sport but they weren’t sure how to do it. Two years ago, there was no women’s flag football club at ASU, so the Smiths went to work.
“We started intramurals with the team but then we were like, ‘Let’s just start a (club) team,’” Sophia said.
The process wasn’t easy. They had to restart conversations with administrators multiple times to get approval, and the team hosted its own fundraisers.
“Funding was definitely a big challenge for us and just getting people on board and proving we could be successful,” Sophia said.
Despite the challenges, they launched a team within a year. Two years later, the Smiths and the Sun Devils found themselves competing on the sport’s biggest collegiate stage to date.
On April 18 and 19, ASU hosted the first Fiesta Bowl Flag Football Classic for women, an event that took place on ASU’s Tempe campus. But ASU didn’t just host, the Sun Devils proved that they belonged by advancing to the semifinals.
It was everything the Smiths hoped for and worked to build.
“It’s a dream come true,” Sophia said. “We’ve been planning this for the last two years and just watching it come together was truly amazing.”
Laying that foundation and watching it blossom so quickly led to a lot of memorable moments for which even coach Jesse Pap wasn’t prepared.
“It was kind of surreal,” Pap said. “To know that we started this program and now we’re competing with some of the best teams in the country, it was an honor.”
Pap said the Fiesta Bowl Classic was a major step forward, not only for ASU but for the sport.
“This was the inflection point,” Pap said. “This is where everything starts to move forward.”
Pap wasn’t the only one feeling emotional. Assistant coach Mike Brown felt the same way.
Brown has nearly 30 years of coaching experience with boys football and basketball, but this is Brown’s first time coaching women’s flag football. For Brown, the transition was a challenge, but it had its rewards.
“My job is to be the best right-hand man I can be,” Brown said. “After this event, this was by far the most impactful experience of my coaching life.”
One of Brown’s challenges was helping to guide a team with players of every experience level.
On one end of the spectrum was sophomore Marie McCaa, who had never played flag football but considers herself athletic due to experience playing other sports. When McCaa joined the team she was raw.
“I didn’t know a thing about football, even flag football,” McCaa said. “I was just a little fish out there.”
Eventually, McCaa slid into a role modeled just for her. She plays rusher on the defensive side with a goal to put pressure on the quarterback. McCaa quickly realized that her position was like any other position she has played in sports. The most important thing was to use her athleticism and that’s what stood out to the coaches.
“There were many things that went into it like angles, agility and power,” McCaa said. “But as the season progressed I learned to just have fun with it and do what I do best.”
While McCaa was learning the game for the first time, other girls with years of experience were leading the way.
Rylen Bourguet has been playing flag football since she was 5. Her father owns Tucson Turf Elite Football, a prominent club and travel flag football organization based in Tucson for ages 5 to 18 that has won numerous national titles.
“I have three older brothers and two younger brothers,” Bourguet said. “When my older brothers started playing football, I just sat down and watched them play but once I got to the right age I decided to put on the cleats and join their team.”
Bourguet is a two-way player for ASU. She plays wide receiver and safety. At the Fiesta Bowl, she showed off her offensive skills for two days, hauling in 60 catches for 627 yards and 11 touchdowns. Aside from her stats, her experience paid off during one of ASU’s most defining moments in the tournament.
In pool play, ASU had to defeat Alabama State. The Sun Devils started off hot, scoring two touchdown passes in the first half but found themselves in a tight ballgame in the second half. With less than a minute remaining on the clock, Bourguet caught the game-winning touchdown for the Sun Devils to secure a 27-20 victory.
The Sun Devils advanced to the quarterfinals and beat USC but later fell in the semifinals against the University of Central Florida. Despite the loss, the game against Alabama State meant everything to Bourguet.
“There really are no breaks, you have to stay locked in the whole time,” Bourguet said. “That’s a moment every athlete wants to be in and I’m proud our quarterback Allison Rodriquez trusted me in that moment.”
The Sun Devils never would have dreamed this is where they would end up a few months into their season. Earlier in the year, they struggled like any new team would. They were shut out in their first game, but by the end of the season their growth was undeniable.
“If you knock us down, we’re not staying there…that’s our grit,” Brown said. “We had players who had never played football before and you couldn’t tell by the end of the year.”
As women’s flag football progresses in the nation and world, participation numbers are improving dramatically. In just a few years, participation in state-sanctioned high school girls’ flag football has shot up from around 15,000 players in 2021 to almost 70,000 in 2025, with children participating nationwide.
The crowning moment (for now) came in January when all three NCAA divisions voted to add women’s flag football to the Emerging Sports for Women program
For schools like ASU, those numbers and that vote represent more than just improvement. They represent an opportunity for more girls and women who love the sport, with a hurdle now cleared for young athletes to potentially work towards a career.
For Sierra and Sophia Smith, that opportunity is exactly why they built this program.
ASU’s slub team didn’t exist just two years ago and had to restart the recognition process multiple times while fighting for funding. To watch the sport’s dramatic and rapid progression is meaningful to them.
“Our main focus is youth athletes and just showing them they can do anything they put their mind to,” Sophia said.
As Sierra and Sophia enter their senior year, they can’t wait to see what comes next.
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