Vikings Help Kick Off Women’s Flag Football League with Historic Jamboree

Augustana Head Coach Kiley Coyne echoed Lee’s sentiments.

Coyne, who also plays semipro football for the Sioux Falls Snow Leopards of the Women’s Football Alliance, expressed pride in continuing to champion women’s sports.

“The good thing about flag football is it’s so inclusive. You don’t have to be a freak athlete to play flag football. So these women that came in that maybe played softball or basketball in high school but didn’t get recruited to any university to play that sport, they can [play flag football] here. And the NFL and the Vikings have really set up a great league for us to get that started.”

Coyne is also thankful for the support of Vikings fullback and Augustana alum C.J. Ham, who has been a long-time proponent of girls flag football from the youth league level, and she pointed to him as a significant reason Augustana (also nicknamed the Vikings) felt strongly about joining the women’s league.

“It’s just a such cool connection with C.J. … and we wanted to do this in South Dakota,” she said.

Just down the road from the University of Northwestern, Tavian Swanson works as an assistant coach for the Bethel University men’s tackle football team and will also serve as the women’s flag head coach.

Swanson explained that while the contact element of tackle football obviously is removed, there are many parallels in coaching approach.

“Now I got to break it down to the basics to get these girls ready to go,” he said. “That could be just stances, to running … to watching the ball, to not watching the ball, all these different types of things. I’ve got to really break it down to the bare bones and build them up from that.

“For me, it’s also a learning experience of teaching the women, ‘Hey, you’re not form-fitting going in for a tackle; you’re form-fitting going in for a flag,” Swanson noted.