We Speak Flag / 7v7 Football
Four Straight Finals, One Missing Trophy: Keiser’s Fall Is All About the Chase
No program in college flag football lives closer to a championship than Keiser — or feels the distance more.
Last May in Bradenton, the Seahawks reached the NAIA national championship game for the fourth consecutive year and fell 13-6 to Warner, which finished a 24-0 season with its first national title. Four straight trips to the final is a dynasty’s résumé. It is also four straight springs that ended one win short, and everyone in West Palm Beach knows it.
So the fall, for Keiser, is not an offseason. It is a construction season. Head coach Sam Harris, who has led the program since its beginning, took the Seahawks’ standard north in September: Harris and Keiser alumnae including Hernandez-Silva and Young competed at the World Flag Series event at York Lions Stadium in Toronto on Sept. 19, flying the program’s flag against international competition months before the college season opens.
Back home, the work looks like the photo above — a new practice tradition borrowed from Keiser’s lacrosse program, where the crown is earned, not given, and one Seahawk wears it until somebody takes it from her. It is a small thing, and it is exactly the point: a team that has lost four finals is building its edge one practice rep at a time.
The target has not moved. The Sun Conference and the NAIA postseason still run through the same handful of powers — defending champion Warner, five-time champion Ottawa, which was stunned by Kansas Wesleyan in last spring’s quarterfinals, and Keiser, the finalist that refuses to go away.
When the Seahawks open their spring season, they will do it as the most experienced championship-game team in the country that has never lifted the trophy. Keiser’s whole fall says the Seahawks plan to change that sentence in May.
Revenge on Senior Night: Hewitt-Trussville Rides a Roller-Coaster Season Into the 6A Playoffs
The Skipps Twins Deliver Alaska’s Title, and Dimond’s Run Ends One Game Short
Marana Makes Its Statement: A 17-0 Shutout of No. 2 Salpointe Catholic
Vestavia Hills Takes a 15-4 Record and a First-Round Bye Into the AHSAA 6A Playoffs
On the Blue Turf, No. 20 Boise State’s Playoff Path Runs Through Texas State’s Track Team
No. 5 Notre Dame Comes Off Its Bye to Face Navy — With No Room for Another Slip
No Margin Left: No. 8 BYU Tries to Bounce Back Against Arizona State in Provo
No. 6 Utah Puts the Nation’s Longest Win Streak on the Line at Giant-Killer Cincinnati
We Speak Flag / 7v7 Football
Revenge on Senior Night: Hewitt-Trussville Rides a Roller-Coaster Season Into the 6A Playoffs
Few teams in Alabama have lived a season like Hewitt-Trussville’s — and few finished the regular season with a better story.
The Huskies closed their home schedule on Senior Night with a 25-15 win over Oxford, avenging a Week 2 loss to the Yellow Jackets and sending off a six-player senior class the right way. It was the last turn of a roller coaster that never really leveled out.
Hewitt-Trussville’s fall, as chronicled game by game on the team’s own feed, went like this: a 15-6 region win over Thompson in which the Huskies held the Warriors scoreless for the entire second half. A 35-0 road rout of 5A McAdory, done in three quarters, for a fourth straight win. A region win at Hoover so chaotic that, in the team’s words, no one could tell the time or the score because the scoreboard did not work. A 38-19 region-finale loss to No. 9 Prattville — followed immediately by a bounce-back win, because that is what this team does.
The Huskies play in Class 6A, Region 3, the deepest neighborhood in Alabama flag football, alongside unbeaten-in-region Spain Park, Vestavia Hills, Prattville, Hoover and Thompson. Surviving it earned Hewitt-Trussville a first-round date with James Clemens when the AHSAA 6A playoffs open Nov. 2-5.
The photo above — the whole program packed into a team dinner at Walk-On’s — is the other half of the scouting report. The Huskies are close, they are loose, and they have already proven they can beat region heavyweights and answer bad weeks with good ones.
James Clemens gets the next test. After the season Hewitt-Trussville just lived, there is not much the playoffs can show the Huskies that they have not already seen.
The Skipps Twins Deliver Alaska’s Title, and Dimond’s Run Ends One Game ShortMarana Makes Its Statement: A 17-0 Shutout of No. 2 Salpointe Catholic
Four Straight Finals, One Missing Trophy: Keiser’s Fall Is All About the ChaseVestavia Hills Takes a 15-4 Record and a First-Round Bye Into the AHSAA 6A PlayoffsOn the Blue Turf, No. 20 Boise State’s Playoff Path Runs Through Texas State’s Track TeamNo. 5 Notre Dame Comes Off Its Bye to Face Navy — With No Room for Another SlipNo Margin Left: No. 8 BYU Tries to Bounce Back Against Arizona State in ProvoNo. 6 Utah Puts the Nation’s Longest Win Streak on the Line at Giant-Killer Cincinnati-
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