Kassandra Young had never played flag football before a couple months ago. But on a crisp April morning, she was one of dozens of middle schoolers playing flag football at Hoover High School’s turf field.
And she was killing it.
During the Language Academy Lions’ first game against Clark Middle School, Young scored a touchdown and pulled down an interception, helping propel her team to a 22-2 victory. The Lions capped off the day with a second victory, winning 47-12 over the John Muir Language Academy. With that win, they secured the two victories they’d needed to advance to the playoffs as a ninth seed in the Western division.
Kassandra’s parents, Chris Young and Claudia Spain, sat in the stands watching their daughter intently. Spain said Kassandra has always loved sports. She played in San Diego Unified’s middle school soccer league in previous years.
“But she says she likes football the best,” Spain said with a smile.
If flag football hadn’t been offered at Kassandra’s middle school, her parents aren’t sure she would have had the opportunity to play in an organized league. But now, she plans to continue to play in high school.
Five years ago, San Diego Unified’s middle school sports program didn’t exist. Since its creation, the program has received almost universal praise from teachers, parents and students.
They credit the program with expanding athletic opportunities, improving student morale and parent involvement and even producing academic benefits. The program has also grown rapidly – more than 5,700 students compete yearly across seven different sports. The response has been so significant that even as district officials grapple with budget deficits and funding cuts, they aim to go in the opposite direction with middle school sports – expansion.
‘Where Has This Been?’
The years after the outbreak of Covid gave rise to a slew of crises – learning loss was rampant, chronic absenteeism had skyrocketed, social-emotional issues were pervasive. But they also presented some unique opportunities, San Diego Unified Trustee Richard Barrera said. After all, federal and state officials pumped millions of dollars into schools.
That was a boon for lots of projects, including middle school sports.
Barrera said San Diego Unified officials had long made special attempts to prioritize the needs of middle schoolers. Students at that age often find themselves at an uncomfortable educational and developmental pivot point and often without the benefit of the extracurricular opportunities offered in high school.
“The mental health needs of students, the physical health needs of students, the availability of funding and also just the awareness of a need to prioritize middle schoolers in our district, I think all of that came together and created the idea for middle school sports,” Barrera said.
That’s where Lonnie Jones came in. He’s been a mainstay in San Diego Unified athletic programs for more than two decades. He’s coached everything from basketball to field hockey, but now he was taking on a new role: middle school athletics coordinator.
When it comes to athletics, Jones said California is behind the curve of some other states. Some middle schools have after-school leagues, but they’re often for sports like kickball, which are not high school sports. San Diego Unified’s goal was to create “vertical alignment,” with high schools, Jones said.
Exactly how this would work, or how many students would sign up, was unclear, Jones said. So, they decided to launch one sport as a test in the spring of 2022.
“We were like, ‘Hey, let’s roll out with the biggest sport in the world. Let’s roll out with soccer,’” Jones said. “Once people saw this, they said, ‘Oh my gosh, where has this been? We’ve always needed it. This is awesome. We want more.’” he said.
So, district officials answered. The next year, they added basketball, volleyball, flag-football and track. The year after that, they continued to expand, adding cheer and wrestling.
There have been challenges, like finding coaches. Many of the district’s high school coaches coach the middle school teams, with their assistants fanning out across each middle school that feeds into their high school. But there aren’t enough high school coaches, so the district has turned to middle school teachers, parents and even a contracting company to fill the gaps.
Leaders modeled the program largely after what was already happening at high schools. All the sports they’ve launched are available at the high school level.
As the options grew, so did the number of students. During that first year, 884 students signed up to play soccer. This year, 5,764 students signed up to play.
The Impact
For Jen Davis, the middle school sports program has been nothing short of revelatory. Not only do both her daughters attend the Language Academy, but she also teaches English at the school. The Language Academy’s structure – which includes separate Spanish and French language tracks – can sometimes encourage a degree of disconnection among students. She said the program has had a noticeable impact on students.
“All of the sudden, kids have new friendships, and friendship circles are expanding and in the quad they’re high fiving kids who they never would have spoken to,” Davis said. “They feel a sense of belonging. They’re all lions now,” she said.
Davis’ daughters Amelia and Clara said they’ve also felt that change.
“The sports are a way for all the middle school grades to be together and talk to each other and make friends instead of being separated,” Amelia said.
Spain, Kassandra’s mother, said she’s noticed personal changes in her daughter as well. She’s become more confident and even made more friends.
“My daughter is more on the shy side, so I think this helps her to kind of embrace who they are and the skills they have. It’s just opened up the person she really is,” Spain said.
Cody Petterson, San Diego Unified’s board president, views middle school sports as an equity program. Private or club sports leagues can be costly and require parents to shuttle kids back and forth. For many families, that may not be a possibility.
“Some of the kids that would most benefit from sporting activities … are the ones that are least able to participate in private alternatives. So, providing this in middle school through the public school system is a great way to pull in those kids” Petterson said
That’s the case for Chris and Kandy Bao, whose daughter Celine plays for Language Academy’s flag football team. Their daughter had never played sports before joining her middle school teams. She started with soccer, then she decided to give flag football a try.
“I don’t really know how it happened,” Chris Bao said with a laugh.
Celine now plans on continuing to play during high school – though it seems like she may stick to soccer. The fact that the program is free and practices happen at school has been huge for them.
“We have two younger kids, so I wouldn’t have been able to travel around for a sports league,” Kandy said.
That equity angle extends to gender, Davis said. While boys may touch a football thousands of times before high school, girls may only ever be exposed to the game during PE. In Davis’ view, bringing the sport to middle schools has begun to normalize them, giving girls the opportunity to try something out they might not have. That’s evident with Language Academy’s team – about 16 of the girls had never played the sport before this season.
“As someone who grew up loving football but did not have the chance to play flag football, my heart is spilling over because all these girls have the chance to be competitive at such a fun game,” Davis said.
Jones said there have also been academic knock-on effects from launching the program. Like with high school sports, students need to maintain academic and citizenship eligibility to play. If a student’s grades drop below a 2.0 average, they can sign a waiver that requires them to raise their grades or be dropped from their schools’ team. That probationary waiver, however, can only be utilized once per school year.
That added incentive seems to be making an impact, Jones said.
“Our data is showing that our grades are going up, and we’re hearing that from the sites as well,” he said.
He plans to release data about the impact in the coming months.
Davis has seen that first-hand. As the program grew, it became too much for Jones to oversee by himself, so he created athletic liaison positions at each middle school to handle some of the day-to-day work, like ensuring students were academically eligible. Davis serves as the liaison at the Language Academy and said the eligibility angle has kids paying attention to their grades and citizenship marks who may not have otherwise.
“At this young age, these kids are already getting imprinted with ‘We’re scholar-athletes, with scholar coming first,’” Davis said.
‘It’s All About Access’
Over the past year, San Diego Unified officials have been grappling with a significant budget deficit. That’s led to the need to cut programs. Throughout that process, Petterson noticed a trend.
“Almost every cluster meeting I went to, almost every time I went to a foundation meeting or did a site visit and talked to parents, they would come and say, ‘Please don’t cut middle school sports,’” Petterson said.
Officials spare the program, which carries a $1.7 million yearly price tag. Looking forward, district leaders would like to expand it. That may mean adding additional sports like baseball and softball, or even adding additional levels, like mimicking the junior varsity and varsity split seen at high schools – maybe both.
The latter change is especially important, Barrera said, because his goal is to create as many opportunities as possible for kids to get involved.
“It’s all about access,” Barrera said. “It’s really, ‘how do we how do we expand the program in a way that it’s just going to get more students involved?”
Neither move would be cheap. That’s why district officials are looking outside of traditional revenue streams to philanthropists or even local sports teams to help finance expansions, Petterson said. While those kinds of organizations can be reticent to get involved in schools’ core academic functions, they may be much more willing to get involved in extracurricular activities.
“When you have a program that’s clearly great for social relationships, emotional, physical development and growth and really brings parents into the picture … it’s the kind of thing where the philanthropic community can clearly see an opportunity to step up,” Petterson said.
Partnerships have already started to form, Jones said. The Chargers, of former San Diego fame, sponsor a kickoff camp for the flag football season and even ran a mid-season tournament that featured giveaways and visits from former players. The recently formed San Diego Football Club held a soccer camp at Logan Memorial Educational Campus that served around 500 students. Jones has even had meetings with representatives for the Clippers, also of former San Diego fame.
For Jones, who grew up in southeastern San Diego and attended Lincoln High School, the human element of these partnerships is the most important piece. He said while there were a ton of great people in the community where he grew up, and a ton of talent, there weren’t as many opportunities. So, when people took the extra step to be present, it was meaningful. He still remembers how NFL All-Star and Lincoln alum Marcus Allen brought his Raiders teammates to play a celebrity basketball game for the community every year. That had a powerful impact on Jones.
That approach extends beyond partnerships. To Jones, whose life’s work is coaching, leading this program means showing up and making sure people know he cares. That’s why he starts most Saturday’s at 5:00 a.m. and lugs camera gear to high schools across the district. He takes photos, films video and even makes highlight reels. This may just be middle school sports, but he wants students to feel seen.
“I’m all in with this program. I just know how to do it one way, and that’s with heart and love, and to show the kids that with action, show the families with action. That’s what we’re about,” Jones said.
