Nearly 200 kids ready to kick off new youth flag football league in Quincy this August

QUINCY — A new youth sports league is coming to Quincy.

The Quincy Youth Flag Football League will begin play the week of Aug. 28 for kids entering first through fourth grades. There will be eight teams in each of two divisions — first and second graders are combined, as are third and fourth graders — and all teams will play a seven-game schedule at Johnson Park.

The top two teams in each division after the regular season will square off in a championship game at QU Stadium, to be played either Oct. 16 or Oct. 23, depending on any weather-related cancellations in the regular season.

The league is the brainchild of Taylor and Lynn Rakers, Jon and Mary Stephens and Derrick and Melanie Weerts, who comprise the volunteer QYFFL Board of Directors.

“All of us have kids in that age range,” said Taylor Rakers, district manager of Junior Achievement for Northeast Missouri and West-Central Illinois.

“We really saw a need for a competitive flag football league in the Quincy area. We had been tossing the idea around for a couple of years. We wanted to keep score, we wanted to keep standings, we wanted to hand out medals and we wanted to have a championship game.

“Finally, we decided we were going to pull the trigger on this.”

The first thing the parents did was to test interest in the proposed league on Lynn Rakers’ personal Facebook page by floating a single question: Would you be interested in a new flag football opportunity?

“The response was overwhelming,” Taylor Rakers said. “We realized this was going to be a success if we kept the price point competitive.”

The parents worked out an agreement with the Quincy Park District to use Johnson Park and bought a licensing agreement with sportsengine.com to build a website and create an app to handle registration, help form rosters and serve as a communication tool for league organizers, coaches and parents.

The board decided to cap each team at 12 players — or 192 overall — for the 7-on-7 league at a cost of $75 per player. Each participant will receive a T-shirt and mouthpiece. Registration ran from June 1-30, and only three roster spots in the third- and fourth-grade division were unfilled.

“The issue with a lot of recreational leagues is that rosters are so big that kids may only get to play half the game,” Taylor Rakers said. “A lot of that has to do with not as many parents volunteering to coach anymore, so teams are larger. We want all the kids to have the opportunity to play.

“We opened registration at 8 a.m. on Monday (June 1) and had 99 kids sign up in the first 90 minutes. We realized this is the real deal.”

Teams are not limited to players from Quincy. Three full teams from Mendon signed up, as well as a team from Camp Point. Individual players from Liberty and Payson in Illinois and Canton, Palmyra and Hannibal in Missouri have registered.

Early on, the board talked with Quincy University football coach Gary Bass and Conner McLaughlin, the school’s sprint football coach, about using QU Stadium for the championship game.

“We wanted to do something extremely special for the players,” Taylor Rakers said. “The coaches were more than ecstatic to let us use their facility.”

Taylor Rakers said each game will have a head official, with Bass and McLaughlin providing QU players to serve as side judges.

The striped field will be 60 yards long, with two 7-yard end zones, and 20-to-25 yards wide. Games will be 48 minutes long, broken into 24-minute halves, with a running clock.

First- and second-grade teams will play on Monday and Wednesday evenings, with third- and fourth-grade teams playing on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. Two games will be played each evening.

Taylor Rakers said a binder is being created for coaches. It will include a rulebook, suggestions on how to set up and run practices, and a base set of plays they can run. Each coach will also receive a football to use for practice.

“A lot of people are willing to coach but have never run a practice before,” he said. “We want to give them some insight. We’re trying to provide a level of quality at every single aspect.”

Seven sponsors have signed up to provide financial support to help pay expenses not covered by the registration fee: Advance Physical Therapy, ILMO Products, Titan International, Harvey’s Furniture, the Liquor Booth, Doors-N-More and JBS Quincy.

The Quincy Noon Kiwanis Club also provided a grant.

Taylor Rakers believes the QYFFL will complement, not compete with, other flag and tackle football leagues in Quincy.

“We’re looking at different sets of kids and parents,” he explained. “There are kids and parents who would play tackle football in kindergarten, if it was available. There are others who prefer flag football and aren’t worried about keeping score or standings.

“We’re providing another option for our kids and other kids in the community.”