Simmons Says - Constructing an unbeatable flag team

One of the most enjoyable things about being part of the Warren County Sports Authority is I get to sit back and watch as the sports landscape spins around me. Whether it’s attending the big games, being right beside the action taking pictures or the hundreds of messages I get throughout the year from people, it’s not hard to figure out what is captivating Pioneer Nation.

The last two springs, it’s been easier than ever: Warren County loves girls flag football. The Lady Pioneers have been gridiron giants and the community has loved following along, supporting the girls and – hopefully even more this Friday – packing Nunley Stadium to support the team.

While I think being instantly successful has helped – Warren County was 11-4 last year and has started this season with two dominant wins – the immediate popularity feels like it would’ve been there even if the Lady Pioneers didn’t get off to a tremendous start. Just listen to the talk around the games and what the coaches, players and fans all say – it’s rarely chatter about winning.

Instead, you hear one word more than maybe the rest of the year combined: Fun. Playing a new game seems like it has reintroduced all our local girls – and really all of Warren County – to what got these kids into sports in the first place. It’s supposed to be fun.

When you hear parents saying, “I’m so glad to see my kid smiling,” or players chiming in, “I just love getting to go out there and be a part of it,” then you know something is working. Flag football is here to stay and I wouldn’t be surprised if we have middle school kids joining in on the fun by 2026-27.

I’m sure I’ll have plenty more to say about the flag football teams moving forward, but I did have a thought exercise over the weekend that I ran by the WCSA gang and wanted to explore more. If flag football had been a sport offered over the years, who would’ve been some of the standouts?

I limited it to my time on the sports beat, which last month hit 16 years (I started at the Standard on Monday, Feb. 8, 2010). With over a decade of athletes to sort through, I started narrowing down a list, hoping to figure out a 20-player roster of Lady Pioneers who would have been legends if they had a chance to suit up at Nunley Stadium.

And while I can’t wait to hear the hundreds of “what-abouts” once this list hits the internet, here are the 20 that I came up with.

Soccer studs – Ansley Mullican Murphree, Katie Toney, Bekah Jackson

Well, at least we’re going to dominate punting, right? Actually, I think these three would be able to do way more than that if they decided to switch from the pitch to the gridiron.

Ansley actually took part in some flag football games during her tenure at WCHS, where she was a multi-time District MVP and left as the school’s leading goal scorer. Back then they played powder-puff games as a fundraiser and she was a force – capable of running by anybody and never afraid to run through somebody if they got in the way.

Toney came through about a decade later and rewrote the soccer record book with her own special blend of speed, strength, endurance and tenacity. While she’s known most for her soccer exploits – she’s moved on to being an all-conference performer at Tennessee Tech now – she actually held track records at WCHS too.

Jackson is another District MVP player for Lady Pioneer soccer who I think has elite athleticism that would translate effortlessly into flag football. Basically my criteria boiled down to this: if you were good enough to be an MVP in your sport, then you’re a good enough athlete to figure out how to be a star in flag football too.

Jackson, Toney and Mullican all fit the bill.

Shooting stars – Kyra Perkins, Sable Winfree, Tyra Wright

If we were having a flag football fantasy draft of star Lady Pioneers since 2010, my guess is both Perkins and Winfree would be in contention for the No. 1 pick. While many keep wondering what it’s going to take to get the Lady Pioneer basketball program back to what it was just four years ago, they may want to ask the question a different way: when do you think we’re going to have two Division I athletes suiting up in the backcourt together again?

Perkins, who helped her Austin Peay Lady Govs make it to the ASUN tournament finals over the weekend, is probably one of the best athletes to ever wear a Lady Pioneer uniform. She was capable of guarding 1-5 on the hardwood, then could spend her spring going out and setting school records that still stand in track.

When it comes to Winfree, I think there are still coaches – now ones in college – trying to find players who can stay in front of her. She has great speed, but it was her shiftiness and ability to cut on a dime that really made her special. If she could make all those moves and cuts while dribbling a basketball, imagine what she could do if all she had to do was focus on carrying a football.

Wright was another no-brainer. If you sign a Division I scholarship, you’re a tremendous athlete.

Good luck to any opposing team that would have to try to keep Wright from getting position on jump balls in the red zone. Any QB would love to have a 6-foot-3 weapon to just throw it up and let her bring it down.

Diamond dandies – Lauren Wilkinson Cotten, Hailey Wood, Emily Mikkola, Madison Hollis

OK, I have to admit: this is cheating. Because softball and flag football run at the same time, all these kids would’ve had to make a difficult choice of what sport to play. And considering all four of them were District MVPs and signed softball scholarships, I bet they would’ve stuck with softball.

That said, this is my list so I make the rules. I’m not building a team without some of the kids with the best arms, best speed and best hands in Warren County over the last 16 years.

When I think about what a prototypical QB for flag football would be, Wilkinson may be exactly the athlete you would try to build. When she was scoring over 1,400 points and winning defensive MVPs on the diamond back in 2012, the size and speed blend – she was at least 6-foot-1 but could move like a guard or middle infielder – was awe-inspiring. Then you factor in that she had a bazooka arm from shortstop and I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a better candidate to play QB.

In terms of game speed in their sport, Wood would rival Sable and Toney for people who seemed like they made everybody else look like they were moving in slow motion. As a safety, I couldn’t imagine how much of the field Wood could cover on her own – much like when she went to college and became a Gold Glove centerfielder at the University of the Cumberlands.

As I mapped out more potential lineup combinations, I didn’t exactly have a good idea of what position Mikkola would play, but I just know you’d want her on the team. She was all-district in volleyball and basketball, then was an MVP performer on the diamond. I once saw her Spiderman flip over a kid for a rebound and it still may be the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. Just put her on the field and she’ll make plays.

Same logic for Hollis, while also adding another caveat: She’s one of the best postseason performers for the Lady Pioneers ever. Almost every one of Warren County’s major championships on the diamond over the last decade occurred when Hollis was in the circle, so I’d take my chances that a kid who is completely unbothered by pressure would come through on the gridiron.

Volleyball greats – Caroline McKinley, Bethany Fye

One is an MVP. The other is a school record holder who happened to break most of the records the MVP set.

McKinley was the centerpiece of what was a great 2012 volleyball team that could still be considered one of the best in school history. Despite not being a skyscraper on the court, McKinley could meet anybody at their highest point and hammer home a spike or send theirs heading back the opposite direction.

I’ll take my chances with that kind of athleticism.

Fye did the exact same thing as a Lady Pioneer. She was a monster at the net, sending fear into opponents with spikes that felt more like heat-seeking missiles than regular hits.

Maybe they’d be linebackers. Maybe they’d be wide receivers going out wide to high point the ball. Either way, both would be big-time athletes capable of helping the team in major ways.

Track stars – Ella Van Vranken, Ally Beneke, Madison Smartt, Savannah Winfree

Since we’re co-oping right now with DeKalb County in flag football, then it felt like I could get away with taking two of the best co-op athletes in Warren County history and putting them on this team too. Van Vranken, who I believe once held four separate school records in track, and two-time high jump state champion Beneke are kids you have to have on this team.

It’s all about speed and athleticism. Van Vranken may not have been a sprinter, but I bet she would’ve been able to run by – or run down – plenty of people. Ditto for Beneke, who could also just jump over the defense if she couldn’t run past them.

Smartt gets the call because, like a lot of people on this list, she could run like a gazelle. She was an amazing sprinter and soccer player in the early 2010s for Warren County and – like Ansley – she got to play in some flag football games and the speed obviously translated.

Savannah was one of my last additions to the roster, but it was only because I couldn’t figure out which sport I wanted to list her under. Ask any of her coaches in soccer, track or basketball and they’d probably say she was best at their sport.

Honestly, she was just a phenomenal athlete who was good at everything. Flag football, if it had been available, may have been her best sport.

Already proven enough – Bri Taylor, Zoie Verge, Chloe Wanamaker, Ariyanna Rippy

If we’re going to take on some other community’s hypothetical best athletes of the last 16 years, then I want to know I have some experience on the squad. Sure, we can bet on all these athletes getting brought to the present from a time machine and figuring it out with a couple of practices, but Taylor, Verge, Wanamaker and Rippy have already proven they know what to do to be successful.

Taylor has already taken the next step in her flag career, making big plays for Cumberland University at the college level. Verge, despite only getting one year to play flag at WCHS, made some of the best catches seen at Nunley Stadium last spring.

Wanamaker and Rippy are still in the midst of writing their legacies with Lady Pioneer flag football, but there’s already a few chapters to each of their stories. I bet both are hoping the final chapter is a state championship.

If you don’t agree with my list, well it’s probably because we have been blessed with some great female athletes over the last 16 years and I can’t possibly name them all. If you want to make some suggestions to the list, get in the comment section or email jeff.simmons@mainstreetmedia.llc to connect. I’m sure we’ll talk some about this list on the WC Sports Authority show.

And not to leave out the Lady Broncos, here’s a quick list of players who I think would be immediate impact athletes for Boyd if they needed to form a team of players from the last 16 years to take on the world.

Current stars – The whole team

When you practice for all of four days and go out and beat two high schools whose rosters on the other side of the field have more kids than your entire high school population, you’re obviously doing something right. Everybody on the current team would need to be on the all-time Boyd team because they’re already part of the history and the fabric of flag football for eternity now.

Senior Cydney Jane Perry deserves a special shoutout because she’s been absolutely unreal through the team’s first four games. She’s thrown for 316 yards, rushed for 273 more yards and accounted for 10 touchdowns. Defensively, she’s a pass-rushing specialist with 10 sacks in four games and she also has intercepted a pass for a TD.

I doubt she has much interest in playing in college, but she could.

Lady Bronco standouts to add to the fold –

Kelly Bush, Regin Grissom, Krista Chisam, Paige Sweeten, Audrey Durham, Lia Wright, Mia Onderka, Kapri Talley, Rhiannon Hoover, Mackenzie Pistole, Morgan Deweese, Kaci Lupo, Ashley Newby

Easy decision on the first five – I can personally vouch for how tenacious and competitive Bush, Grissom, Chisam, Sweeten and Durham all are since I coached them. While I think they’d all help on the gridiron, I think Chisam may have been the one who really missed her calling as a flag football star. She would’ve been unreal.

Dipping back even further, Wright – like her sister I put on the WCHS roster – was so talented in high school that she was able to parlay it into a college basketball offer. She was a defense-first player who would be a terror as a linebacker tracking down ball carriers.

The trio of Hoover, Pistole and Deweese were part of one of the most decorated basketball teams in school history – the only NACA champions Boyd has produced – and you want winners on your team.

Lupo and Newby are throwbacks who were great athletes who would figure out flag football on the fly.

Before anybody says “what about some of the softball players from Boyd?” – yes, I’m aware they had a pretty decent run on the diamond, but that was right before I moved back. The first Boyd softball game I went to ended up 30-0 and then the program folded the next spring.