By Lily Groves, Staff Writer
For Violet Hall, a sophomore at Wheaton North High School, Jim Rexilius was more than the name pasted on her school’s football stadium. Rexilius, in addition to being the former coach of Wheaton North’s tackle football team, was her great-grandfather.
Hall is currently giving Rexilius’ Wheaton North football legacy new life as the first of his descendants to play football at the same school where he coached for more than 25 years. The game has always been in her family, but Wheaton North’s new girls flag football team has given Hall a different way to engage with the sport.
“I have a little cousin up in California who does flag football and she really loved it,” said she. “When it came to Illinois, I thought I’d try it out because most of my family has done football.”
Hall typically plays as a wide receiver on Wheaton North’s inaugural girls flag football team, one of more than 60 new teams that began this season in the Illinois High School Association. Both Wheaton North High School and Wheaton Warrenville South High School, the two high schools in Community Unit School District 200, are in the midst of their first season. A new program that caters to girls in grades five through eight also began within the city of Wheaton this year through the Bill George Youth Football League.
The growth of girls flag football in DuPage County reflects both international and local trends. Two years ago, flag football gained approval as an Olympic sport for the upcoming 2028 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles. Closer to home, the Chicago Bears have begun multiple leagues through outreach programming, including the United Kingdom’s inaugural girls team.
Justin Heth, dean of residence life at Wheaton College, recently became the coach of his middle school daughter’s flag football team, the Wheaton Rams. Heth said that his daughter has “played with the boys ever since she was in first grade, and we thought her time would end here in sixth grade because she can play flag with the boys still, but then in high school we’d have to make decisions.”
The Rams provided a new avenue for her to stay involved in the sport, preparing their players for later participation at the high school level.
Heth, who played football at Taylor University and later in a professional Italian league, is learning flag football strategy alongside his daughter and 20 other girls on the Wheaton Rams team.
“Even in our fifth and sixth grade league, we have a homecoming this year, which is wild to think about,” Heth stated, “but they’re trying to make it just as equal to the boys’ sport, tackle football, which is really fun.”
Still, at Wheaton’s high schools, staffing for tackle football and flag football is far from equal. Wheaton North’s boys tackle football roster consists of 48 varsity players and 10 coaches, with additional coaching staff for sophomore and freshman level players. The girls flag football team has four coaches for over 80 players across both JV and varsity teams.
William Kadera, a lifelong Wheaton resident and football player, moved from the coaching staff on Wheaton North’s boys team to become head coach of the girls flag football team this year. More than 50 girls attended his initial interest meeting last spring, and none of them were cut after tryouts.
“The school has been extremely supportive,” Kadera said, “I’ve been here all my life. I’ve been the student, I’ve been the teacher, I’ve been the coach. I’m a parent now, with my kids in the district and it’s pretty special.”
Some of his former players are also still in the district, with Wheaton Warrenville South’s girls flag football coach, Kevin Farley, having formerly played on Kadera’s tackle football team at Wheaton North. Now the two face each other on the field for the first time of the girls flag football season. The short, eight-week seasons consist of about 16 games for each team and culminates in the Illinois state tournament on Oct. 17-18. The season’s timing allows many dual-athletes to remain active by giving flag football a try, resulting in diverse athletic skillsets within each team.
Last school year, Kadera promoted his new flag football team to his students already involved in other sports, stating, “those athletes that were in a winter or spring sport, it’s a perfect opportunity for them.” This caused many athletes to convert to solely playing flag football, even at the middle school level.
Heth said many women have quit their former sports to focus on flag football and that, “The game’s going to get better and better.”
Most female athletics in Wheaton’s district run track in the spring, so other athletes have chosen to stick to both flag football and their spring sports. Football provides a space to stay in shape during their primary sport’s off-season. Hall, who plays softball in the spring, said, “I’ve done various sports before, and flag football was new, but I thought it was really a good idea to get active with people.”
As strategizing and practice commitment increase, the sport has room to change over the upcoming seasons. Currently, Wheaton North often switches players’ positions and works out strategy based on players’ athletic performance in other sports. “We play different positions, just in case or just for fun,” Hall said. “They just switch around a little bit, but we have a pretty solid group.”
While trial and error create an ever-evolving atmosphere now, flag football’s growing popularity will bring more rules and higher expectations for team success. Heth is taking time to prepare his players for a competitive high school environment. In the meantime, he enjoys that his players read novels during water breaks and scream for him to give a speech after every practice.
“That’s been my joy,” he said. “Teaching these young girls about this game that I love and getting them excited to play.”
