4 Questions With Mill Creek Flag Football Coach

We spoke with Mill Creek flag football coach Alan Tallman to get his insights on last year’s inaugural GHSA season and his expectations for 2021.

Q: Flag football has been a big success in its brief history here in Georgia. How did Mill Creek decide to form a team?

A.:We were one of the landmark programs in Gwinnett who received grants from the Arthur Blank Foundation. I think having a team last year before it became a sanctioned GHSA sport really helped put us into a better position to succeed than teams who were upstarts this season.

Q: How did you get involved as the coach with the flag football team?

A: Put simply, I just answered an e-mail from our athletic director seeking a coach to replace last year’s coach who wasn’t able to continue this season. But this position was intriguing and really exciting for me for a couple of reasons.

One, I’ve been out of football for about five years (coached high school boys for almost a decade and played at University of New Hampshire), and this was an opportunity to dive back in without the time commitment demanded in boys football. That is not to say we don’t put a lot of time into what we do. It’s just simple math. Managing the sheer number of players in the boys game versus managing 18 players is a world of difference. As the head lacrosse coach and a father of three girls, I decided to stop coaching football when I accepted my position at Mill Creek. 

Secondly, having three girls and the idea of them potentially playing in high school or even in college is really exciting. 

Furthermore, Mill Creek has nearly 4,000 students, so I knew we’d be able to assemble a dynamic team in year one – and we did.

I was also blessed with an incredibly gifted and talented staff. Drew and Anna Kindig are married and actually met through playing flag football at UGA. They really know the flag game well. They are tremendous teachers on the field who bring great energy and insight to what we’re trying to accomplish everyday.

Q: How is flag football different than the tackle version of football? 

A. Well, the obvious is that we don’t tackle; we pull flags. So, I’d start there. Flag football is a beautiful finesse sport in which it can help to be tough, but it is not a collision sport in which the tide of the game can change based on one team’s physicality. Our field is shorter, and the sidelines are tighter. When the game is played correctly, it’s one of the most exciting sports, period.

We also play with seven players on the field instead of 11. I’m sure, like anything, rules will change and evolve in the coming years, but in year one, we played with a running clock, so possessions were critical. At first sight, it may look similar to boys 7v7, but the run game is a lot more impactful in flag than most people might imagine.

Q: How was Mill Creek’s first season this past year? 

A: A little bit bitter sweet. We accomplished some major feats in this inaugural season that all our girls, especially our seniors, should be proud of. We also had what I believe was the most talented team in the state. 

But, we were plagued by injuries at the worst time imaginable. Just days before our first round game against a very formidable Lambert opponent who beat us 7-0, we lost three starters. The young ladies we lost in a series of unfortunate events happened to be our top three performers in every statistical category. 

That being said, we had a very deep team and certainly had our chances to win that game but simply didn’t. We will undoubtedly learn from that experience and use it as motivation moving forward.

We finished the regular season 10-0 with a 255-6 point differential. Looking at those numbers, it may seem impossible to improve upon them, but we absolutely plan on being twice as good in 2021 as we were in 2020. 

I also anticipate that 2021 will be an entirely different caliber of ball because of the success and popularity of the sport. There will be more talented coaches looking to break into the sport, and there will be more high-end athletes looking to play because they saw the fun these girls had. I can’t wait to get after it again.