As much as she loved completing flips and stunts as a cheerleader, Tenley Hill felt a bit conflicted.
Why would she cheer for the game when she could play the game?
“There was always that little bit of when I was watching the football game,” Hill told The California Post, “thinking, like, I should be out there, I should be the one doing that.”
She had played girls’ flag football as a high school senior — giving up cheerleading to do so — but knew there was no such team when she arrived at UCLA.
So she started one.
Grasping the opportunity as if she was snagging a pick six, Hill created a club women’s flag football team on campus, rounding up sponsors, forming a schedule and assembling a roster.
Now the freshman has started a movement that she hopes will help elevate the sport to Division I status. That seems reasonable given the considerable momentum women’s flag football has enjoyed as part of a growing network of college teams, not to mention inclusion as a medal sport in the 2028 Olympics.
“It’s really been amazing, how fast it’s growing,” said Michaeltore Smith, the co-head coach of UCLA’s team. “We’ve been able to build something with these girls that’s been huge.”
Next year, UCLA will join the NIRSA Club Flag Football League, a collection of more than 40 7-on-7 teams across the country working in partnership with the NFL to stage a season starting in January and ending with a national championship in early May.
The team that Hill founded has already been a wild success beyond its 11-5 record that included a nine-game winning streak to end the season. She’s constantly getting DMs from high school prospects wanting to join the team. An Instagram page for the team went from zero followers to nearly 8,000 in months.
Everything about the rise of this team seems accelerated. Told that the formation of a club could take up to a year, Hill refused to accept that timetable.
“I was like, ‘No,’ ” she said, “ ‘I want this done by next quarter.’ ”
That meant she needed to quickly form a board and find coaches, among other things. Oakley, GameBreaker, Franklin and Seismic were among the brands that provided gear. A $10,000 donation from the Chargers Social Club provided funding for travel. As word spread about the team, new UCLA football coach Bob Chesney invited players to attend a spring practice.
Fielding a team wasn’t as hard as initially feared. So many hopefuls showed up that cuts had to be made to get down to a roster of 25.
The team held practices whenever it could find an open scheduling slot on the UCLA intramural fields, which doubled as the site of home games. One game against rival USC at the Chargers’ practice facility in El Segundo drew a crowd that might have exceeded 1,000.
For Hill, playing the game required the same sacrifice she made in high school. After being part of the UCLA cheerleading squad that backed the Bruins at the Rose Bowl, she had to give up that endeavor to get on the field herself.
Not that she minded.
“Given a choice over 100 times,” Hill said, “I’m going to choose flag football over cheer every single time.”
What makes the sport so special?
“That touchdown feeling,” Hill said, “is one of the greatest feelings that I’ve ever had — I play defense a lot and a pick six is probably one of my top-five feelings ever, so I just knew that I didn’t want to give that up.”
As much of a go-getter on the field as she is off it, she’s experienced that feeling plenty of times with her new team.
“She has an incredible nose for the football,” Smith said of Hill, one of 48 players picked for the 23-under team in the Select Bowl taking place this week at Galaxy Park in Carson.
Ultimately, beyond her own Olympic aspirations, Hill wants to capitalize on a generational run for women’s sports that now provides a path for those who love flag football to play it from high school to college to the Olympic stage.
“It’s just exciting,” Hill said, “to kind of be that person who’s setting the foundation for girls that are like me.”