By Dave Belcher
Moapa Valley Progress
Just when you thought the football season was over, the Clark County School District responded to Title IX regulations, which means they needed to create another girls winter sport.
The federal law Title IX states, in essence, that there needs to be as many girls playing high school sports as there are boys. Since cheerleading and dance are not considered sports, the district was found below the number needed to comply with the law.
Therefore this season the newly instituted girl’s flag football will begin for competition within the CCSD school only. No private schools are allowed and no northern schools.
The teams will be all in the same league and competing together.
The league is divided into four regions and two leagues.Virgin Valley, Boulder City and Moapa Valley will all find themselves in different leagues. Moapa and Virgin Valley will have already played by the time you get this article as they played in Mesquite last Monday. The first home game for the Pirates will be played today at 3:30.
The coach of the newly formed Pirate team is Overton resident Melanie Vallet. Vallet will lead the team of Pirates into this first exploratory season where the rules have already been changed three times now. When all is finished one of the teams will be crowned as the first Clark County School District girls flag football champion.
Each team will have a rooster of 15 players. Schools like Arbor View who had 125 girls try out for the 15 spots will have a huge advantage over schools like Moapa Valley who had 35 try out.
Coach Vallet is teaching her team the concepts of flag football which is new to both coach and players. This will be a fun and exciting game which will be explained more as the season proceeds.
The game will be played at the high school practice field this year due to the construction which will be going on at the football stadium. Next season games will take place on the football field.
Come and enjoy. It will make for a fun afternoon.
