Israel Carrero is the coach of the first flag football team at Berkeley High School. Playing football throughout high school at Livermore High School, he recently got into flag football and has been playing for the past five years. Since then, he’s learned that football and flag football have a lot of similarities in how they are played, but have “a ton of difference in the way (they) should be ran”.
Carrero believes that playing both sports has given him an advantage in coaching the BHS flag football team. Hired at the end of last school year, he’s worked to recruit girls to join the team. That unfortunately proved difficult, ending up with only 23 girls at tryouts.
“I had 108 young ladies tell me they were committed to coming out … by the end of (tryouts) only 20 wanted to play,” said Carrero.
Since games have started, the team has been getting a lot of support from students. Over 50 students showed up to the first game, which exceeded expectations. Carrero even says there are girls who would like to join the team now. He said, “Working on campus I get young ladies all the time asking if it’s too late to join or when’s tryouts next year.”
Now that Carrero has a team that is playing and thriving he looks forward to the future of the team in two specific ways: How they see the game, and the product of their game, especially building a strong team connection.
“I want the team to see what it feels like to have a sisterhood where they know that each and everyone of them has each other’s back and form an unbreakable bond.”
Carrero has big goals for the future years to come. “I would love to schedule much more games, possibly travel for tournaments in state and out, have a JV and Varsity team and win a NCS State Championship,” he said. “But that is something we will need to slowly build for, of course.”