Girls’ Flag Football Coming To Warren County

A new kind of football is heading to Warren County High School this spring as a girls’ flag football team will be provided for the first time ever.

The team will be led by Paul Martin, whose 23 years of coaching experience includes football, softball and basketball. Martin said in all his years of coaching, he always enjoyed practice and instruction more than the actual game so the opportunity to coach girls excited him.

“When this opportunity came along for me to actually teach more of the game of football to people that really don’t have an understanding of football,” Martin said. “It made me excited and lit a fire under me as well.”

So far, the school has had more than sixty girls that are interested in joining the team. In his coaching experience Martin said he found that girls are more eager to learn.

Martin said football has done so much for him throughout his life that he wants to share his love of football with his team.

“I love football and I want to pass it on to those girls,” Martin said. “And I hope they get a sense of team, unity, a sense of family. Hope it’s something, later on they can tell their grand kids, ‘I was the foundation for this.'”

With 2025 being the first year of girls’ flag football sanctioned by TSSAA, Martin said not all schools will have a team immediately and he is calling schools beyond the Upper Cumberland to fill their schedule.

For the first season in program history, Martin said he wants to treat their games just like they would the boys’ football team.

“We’re allowed to play 16 (games) in a ten week period. But I’d love to get just ten games and play them on Friday night,” Martin said. “Give them the Friday night feel, Friday night lights feel. Band, cheerleaders and all. So, if we can have one game a week for those ten weeks, that’ll be good for this first year.”