Baymen Flag Football League Begins Play

The inaugural season of the Baymen Flag Football League began on October 3 with over 60 Hampton Bays youths taking over the turf field at Hampton Bays High School.

Former Hampton Bays varsity football head coach Rich Doulos, who created the league, said by all accounts — from the kids themselves, the bevy of parents who attended and the volunteer coaches who helped out — it was a great start.

“From my perspective it started pretty smoothly,” he said. “Everything was great. There were no negatives, everything was just positive. We even had some parents who stepped up and helped out. I think the parents saw they could be more proactive with this. I think people see football as this sport with all of this planning and it can be overwhelming, and it can be, but this is a lot more laid back.”

Doulos and his longtime friend Brian Spellman officiated the simultaneous games that were being played on the opposite sides of the turf. Many of the teams, if not all of them, were coached by current Hampton Bays varsity football players, such as starting quarterback Kazmin Pensa-Johnson, wide receiver/linebacker Stephen Sutton and lineman James Clinton.

The flag football league is for Hamptons Bays youth, both boys and girls, who are in grades one through six. There are eight teams split into two divisions, one for children in grades one through three and another with children in grades four through six.

Practices are Tuesday and Thursday every week with games on Sundays. Doulos said that was done purposefully as to not conflict with local soccer leagues, which practice Monday, Wednesday, Friday with games on Saturday. And Doulos said when there was a P.A.L. league in Hampton Bays it used to host games on Sundays, so it worked out in that regard.

Doulos has multiple reasons for starting the flag football league. His first goal is to offer Hampton Bays youth, including his own son, a venue to be more active through football, a sport he loves.

Another reason why he decided to start the league was because there are no longer anymore youth football leagues in Hampton Bays. Those kids who are interested in playing tackle football have to go to Westhampton Beach to do so. With no local P.A.L. league in place there have been no feeder program to the school teams, and numbers have been declining considerably in the sport for years.

Local districts, such as Southampton just to the east, are in similar situations. In fact Southampton, which had traditionally been a football school for over 100 years, has no football program whatsoever this season due to not having enough players. Doulos does not want to see that happen in his home district of Hampton Bays and the thought is if this flag football program generates even just a handful of more players for the school district then it’s a success.

“I think I have to do this for the sake of our program,” he said. “Getting football in their lives when they’re young in a much more safer, non-contact form seems to be the way the go, especially for second, third and fourth-graders.”

Joe McKee, the East Hampton/Pierson/Bridgehampton/Ross varsity football head coach, did the same thing a few years back with his Bonac Flag Football program and now has over 170 players currently registered. It took a few years, McKee said, but he is just now starting to see his numbers at the junior varsity level jump up.

“It definitely took me a good four years to see the sixth graders moving on to play junior high,” he said. “I think the number one thing I've seen from it is if you go to one of our football games you can see a bunch of kids on the sidelines hanging out throwing the football around. You hadn’t seen that for a while.

“We’re pretty fortunate to have 170 kids signed up in the flag football league. It’s really taking and it’s been great on both ends,” McKee continued. “The young kids really look up to the football players and enjoy them. Our kids have really taken the reigns with it and realize that they're tremendous role models to these kids and they’re dong a great job with them.”

Doulos met with McKee this past summer to pick McKee’s brain about what he did that made his program so successful.

“I guess the main emphasis of what I told him was just to make it fun for everybody, get them liking football again,” McKee said. “Just get back to enjoying football and having fun.”

Right now, though, the number one goal for Doulos is to get children active and having fun. One of the things he found the kids liked the most was the official jerseys they were wearing last weekend from NFL Flag, the NFL’s official flag football organization that provides official gear and various other resources.

“I think the kids loved the fact that everything was official and that they looked official,” he said. “Hopefully we increase numbers and I think we’re definitely going to do this in June while kids are in session and more parents will want to come out and coach a team.”

For more information, go to baymenflagfootball.com.