The Illinois High School Association has decided to start the regular summer season for boys' tackle football a week earlier to give athletes more time to rest between games, but no such accommodations exist for girls' flag football.
According Chicago NBC affiliate WMAQ, girls' teams begin the season at the normal time, but the playoffs for both teams start a week earlier, making the girls' season two weeks shorter than the boys. Players and coaches say that doesn't seem fair and questioned the decision, WMAQ's Patrick Fazio and Isabel Papp reported.
"Our regular season is already very short, six-week regular season. It's the shortest in all of Illinois sports, the shortest in all of sports across the high schools of America," said Carlos Panzio, head flag football coach at Maine South High School in Park Ridge. "So, to shorten it down to five weeks is really disappointing, really hard pill for our girls to take."
Coaches like Panzio are concerned that flag football players won't have enough days between games to rest, a concept that inspired the changes to the boys' tackle football season.
Alessandra Gerut, a student flag football player at Chicago's Taft High School, told WMAQ, "I just don't understand why they would be shortening something that women are starting to excel at, and it's just really frustrating for girls like me."
