Flag Football Proceeds

There's been some developments in UT Arlington's fledgling women's flag football program that kind of got lost in the spring sport shuffle of the previous three or four months. Some of the news is internal, some external and with that comes speculation.

In my last full post on the topic, seen here, it mentioned the American Southwest Conference, a Division III conference composed primarily of small private schools, will sponsor the sport. They were the first NCAA conference to sponsor flag football. I heard minor speculation that the ASC could be a home for UTA's newest sport. Without hearing anything from an official source, I had then and still have doubts. I speculated there would be a DI conference offering the sport within half a decade.

Turns out, that was too long. In April, the Big South Conference announced they would sponsor the sport, becoming the first at the highest level to take the plunge. What's interesting to me is how the schools in the Big South treat flag football.

End of November Quick Hits

I wanted to touch on a number of sports for this week, so instead of doing half a dozen separate blog entries of varying lengths, I'm going to wrap all of them into this is one single entry. I don't normally do that, but I suspect that will prevent a post overload that I feel would have happened with six in a short period of time. I'll go in chronological order to avoid confusion.

-THE WOMEN'S VOLLEYBALL season ended a week ago. Prior to the start of the Western Athletic Conference tournament, the All-WAC teams and postseason accolades were given. Even though there were two Maverick players leading the conference in their respective stat categories, I wasn't expecting a player of the year honor for the team, given its fifth of seven finish in conference. Junior setter Mira Ledermueller was first in the WAC in assists with 896 and assists per set at 9.05 to conclude the regular season. Second place had 860 and 7.89 respectively. Junior libero Samantha Glenn had 422 total digs in the regular season, good for second in the conference and had 4.18 digs a set, good for first. 

What irked me is neither made an all-conference team. Senior outside hitter Jalie Tritt was a second-team member. There were two freshmen on the All-Freshman team: middle blocker Sophia Krichev and middle blocker Camryn McMinn.

The List Grows

While looking for something unrelated, I found a women's flag football tidbit last week that I wanted to share. I mentioned in my initial entry when talking about the next sport coming to the UT Arlington portfolio that there were not many schools in Texas and certainly not as many NCAA institutions near UTA that sponsored the sport at the time.

However, there were some folks that were optimistic that number would grow. At the time, the only known NCAA schools Division I were Alabama State, Long Island University, Mercyhurst and Mount Saint Mary's. The known Texas school was Concordia University.

There have been so many additions to the sport since then that keeping up and staying current is turning into a labor of love. It's also one that has been missed by me too often with so many new programs getting their announcement.

Conversation with an AD Part Two - Behind the Scenes of a New Sport

In the first part of my sit-down interview with UT Arlington Athletic Director Jon Fagg, we had a great discussion regarding the Mavericks current home, the Western Athletic Conference, and its transition to the United Athletic Conference starting next year. It was a great talk with some behind the scenes information that wasn't generally known.

In that same theme, particularly the behind the scene workings, the Maverick Rambler looks behind the curtain of UTA's next, newest sport, coming at the dawn of the UAC. At the end of this edition, the topic starts to shift organically to one of the most common topics on campus. 

Here's part two of the one-on-one with the UTA Athletic Director.

The Maverick Rambler: We're going to go back to ... to, to your President for a second. Because, one of the other big headlines: women's flag football.

Jon Fagg: Yeah, women's flag football!

Maverick Stadium will see the Pigskin Again

 Big news out of Arlington Thursday as the UT Arlington Mavericks will be bringing football to the official sports offering of the Athletic Department. 

I thought about using that line on the Western Athletic Conference message boards, but wanted the full qualifier in the title there to avoid misleading the average reader. I did it to one of my sons who got really excited. He wanted to go to Maverick Stadium in the fall.

But here, either you already know the news or, for some weird reason, you choose the Maverick Rambler as your news and know my irreverent style already.

Women's Flag football will debut on campus for the Spring 2027 season.