Sam Fishbein stays busy. She is a server at Texas Roadhouse and usually drives straight there after school. The senior from Orange Park High played five sports during her first three years: basketball, weightlifting, track, cross country, and softball. This year was the first that Clay County offered flag football for female athletes. Fishbein was excited to add a sixth sport to that list, even though it meant missing her senior softball season.
Duval and Nassau counties have had teams for years. Fishbein had played when she was in seventh and eighth grade at Lakeside Junior High and in YMCA recreation leagues before that. She’d been waiting for this opportunity ever since.
“It was something I was always good at,” she says. “With flag football, I knew the game, I knew what I could do, and I knew what I was capable of.”
Seventy girls signed up at the first meeting, though only about twenty showed for preseason conditioning. FHSAA rules prohibit the use of actual footballs at any team-organized practice before the season officially starts, so they threw tennis balls for two weeks.
The team was made up of girls who had already developed strong reputations for themselves in other sports, but there was no clear hierarchy established yet on the flag team.
“Coming into [the] flag football [season], you didn’t know everyone, because it was just all the [girls from] other sports clashing together, trying a new sport,” she says. “Nobody knew who the leader was.”
Fishbein, along with childhood friend Megan Styron, were quick to point out that everyone should start as equals.
“Meagn and I said from the beginning, ‘It doesn’t matter where you’re from, what team you’re from… you were here at flag football, and we’re a family for the flag football team.’”
Practices usually lasted two hours. Head Coach Matthew Boyack, who is also the school’s reigning Teacher of the Year, literally ran the team to a 7-1 regular season record. Using what he referred to as his “favorite invention,” which amounted to a football attached to a broomstick, he would simulate the snap count during suicide gassers. If someone jumped offsides during the drill, Boyack would start them all over. He is generally easygoing but will not tolerate lack of hustle or too much joking at inappropriate times.
Fishbein started every game at center and led the team in receptions. The Lady Raiders found their chemistry early and were winning games handily. At a tournament at Mandarin High School, they beat teams from Duval and Nassau that had been together much longer than them, and their confidence skyrocketed. But they were also susceptible to playing down to their competition.
“I told them, ‘Don’t get big-headed just because we beat these teams. You have to worry about the game you’re in right now,’” she says.
Their only loss came in overtime at the hands of Fleming Island High, who went undefeated in their regular season. Boyack called Fishbein’s number for the final play. Trips-right formation, all slants; she runs a flare underneath the receivers as they charge toward the middle of the field. A Fleming Island defender spies her off the line and breaks the pass up two yards away from the end zone. She is a true competitor and still blames herself for the loss.
Fishbein also went to state in weightlifting the last two years, competing in the clean and jerk and bench press events. “Top-15 at state in my book, I felt that was pretty good.”
She wouldn’t describe herself as a perfect student but understood from an early age how important her grades are. She’s been writing free verse poetry since seventh grade and has books full of her work. She also loves to sing in privacy. She was in the school chorus from fourth grade until her freshman year.
Favorite Athlete: Holly Mangold
Favorite Subject: Zoology
Least Favorite Subject: Science
Ideal Place to Travel: The Philippines
Gatorade or Powerade: Gatorade
Favorite Movie: Never Back Down
Last Song Played: “Turn Down for What,” by DJ Snake and Lil Jon
Superpower: Flight
Player Spotlight/ North Florida/ April 2014
Sam Fishbein
Orange Park High School
Orange Park, FL
Brandon Ibarra
O.P. Senior Savors Only Flag Football Season
