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Sports

Friday Night Lights

As its popularity explodes, the flag football season ends with a bang and a promise of an even bigger season to come.

While CIF Southern Section High School football championship games were contested all over Southern California, parents, players and fans headed to Oak Middle School in Los Alamitos this weekend, to watch future high school football players vie for titles of their own.

It is championship night for the Los Alamitos/Seal Beach Friday Night Lights youth flag football league.  The school's parking lot is filled to capacity, and this final Friday night has all the feel of big time football.

The league, aptly named after the 2004 movie and 2006 television spin-off series, is the brainchild of Rossmoor residents Mark Broersma and Chris Ketcham. Little did they know back in 2006, when they created this concept, that it would explode and become one of the most popular youth leagues in all of Orange County.

"Five years ago Chris and I were wondering just why no one was playing flag football anymore," said Broersma. "He and I grew up playing a lot of flag football and we thought it was it was the most enjoyable sport to play. So we said 'Why don't we start a league just as a little hobby and see if we could get some kids exposed to flag football.' We started with 300 kids in the first year and went to 600 in the second year and from 900 to 1,200 to where we are now at 1,400. "

From kindergarten through eighth-grade, players, cheerleader and parents gathered together for nine Friday nights for fun and the chance to see and play some football. A total of 1,400 players and 125 cheerleaders on 176 teams started this season. All the teams are local, but players come from as far as Pasadena. On this final Friday night, champions were crowned in four divisions from first and second grades to seventh and eighth grades.

Teams in the seventh- and eighth-grade division are named after NFL teams,  while the rest are named after some of the biggest college football teams in the nation. Unlike the current NCAA football format, a playoff actually decides the champions here.

And if you didn't know any better from listening to some of the parents, you'd think you were attending a big-time college football playoff game.

"We play Texas Tech first," one parent, whose son played for Arkansas, was overhead saying to another as they examine the playoff bracket in the first- and second-grade division. "And if we win, I think we play the winner of the Michigan verses LSU or Nebraska verses Oklahoma State next."

Broersma said it's that kind of excitement from kids and parents that gave them the idea to go with college and professional team names as the league continued to grow.

"When we started out, there were just NFL team names," said Broersma. "But as we gained more teams we started naming them after colleges too."

Blake Michaelsen, a 10-year-old fifth grader at Lee Elementary School in Rossmoor plays center for the Harvard Crimson, which, coincidentally, is where his grandfather taught, and where he studied while rooming with a future secretary of state, Henry Kissinger.

It would be a big night for Michaelson and the Crimson as they completed a perfect 14-0 season with a huge 27-16 win against the Texas Longhorns for the fifth- and sixth-grade division championship. In what was a complete team effort, quarterback Brett Wells and teammates Shea Sepulveda, Charlie Nasuti, brothers Cole and Cade Gilbertson, and Nolan Ortiz led the Crimson.

In other championship games, the Arizona Cardinals defeated the Cincinnati Bengals 35-7 for the seventh- and eighth-grade title, and USC was victorious 21-14 against Nebraska for the third- and fourth-grade crown.

Michaelsen, the Crimson player who has been with the league for three years, said that likes the idea of being the one responsible for getting the football to the quarterback.  "It's the best," said Michaelson. "This league is so much fun and I'm having a blast playing. Football is my favorite sport and I've made a lot of pretty good friends here."

On the sidelines, Stacy Timko of Belmont Shore watched her 7-year-old son,  Nicholas, play for the Stanford Cardinal, which won the First and Second Grade Division championship. The Cardinal defeated the Arkansas Razorbacks 18-6. The Lowell Bayside Academy student has been with the league for two years.

"My son just loves this league, and I think the organizers and people who come here are just great," Tinko said. "It's one of the best-run youth leagues around. We always look forward to the Friday night games, and we're looking forward to coming back again next season."

Plenty more are also looking forward to next season too, because registration for the spring 2011 season is already filled. Broersma and Ketcham found themselves with no other choice than to expand. Next year, look for Friday Night Lights to hit Huntington Beach, Garden Grove, Newport Mesa and Murrieta/Temecula.  

Because it's a flag football passing league, there are no helmets and pads used. Each team consists of eight players, with six on the field and two substitutes. Everyone plays three out of the 8-to-10-minute quarters. There is just one practice a week, and all games are played on Friday nights.

Despite the lack of contact, it's a serious league that prepares players for high school. Friday Night Lights has produced local talent such as Servite High School starting quarterback Cody Pittman, who led the Friars to an undefeated 14-0 season and the CIF Southern Section Pac-5 Championship. The league has also had well-known quarterback coaching guru Steve Clarkson work with many of the players.

With Pop Warner and Junior All-American football leagues, as well as AYSO and Little League baseball being longtime staples in the youth sports market, Broersma insists that Friday Night Lights is not competing with anyone. He encourages athletes from those sports to play flag football.

"We knew that the kids in this area are already pretty busy. We knew that if the concept was going to work, we were going to have to make it easier on the parents," said Broersma. "We didn't want to go up against any of the weekend activities, whether it was baseball or AYSO soccer or any of the basketball leagues.

"So what we found out was that parents were free on Friday nights," added Broersma. "We thought it would be kind of cool to have the kids play under the lights on Friday nights."



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