Story Written By: Damon Cook @ CHSAANow.com

AURORA, Colo. — Coach Eric Mosley and his Rangeview Raiders are off to a 6-4 start on the season. Prior to their most recent loss, the Raiders had rattled off three victories in a row.

One of the biggest parts of flag football is teaching girls from a vast variety of backgrounds. Each girl brings differences that one another has to embrace. One thing Mosley always harps on with his girls is finding teachable moments.

Eric Mosley

Overall record at Rangeview: 6-3
Overall record as Head Coach: 6-3
Previous Coaching Experience: Youth flag football head coach, middle school flag football head coach, middle school tackle football, unified basketball head coach, track and field coach.

How cool is it to be a part of the inaugural sanctioned girls flag football season?
It's kind of like getting in on the ground floor of a business. When you're on that ground floor, you get to work through a lot of things, a lot of successes, a lot of failures. It's always a good experience, because it's rare to be able to get in the first year of a brand new CHSAA-sanctioned varsity sport. It is pretty rare. It's a great opportunity, and I'm super blessed and humbled for it.

How have you seen all the girls use their unique backgrounds to help them develop as flag football players?
I've got girls that play in the EYBL and on the AAU side, which is like the Nike circuit, so it's one of the best circuits you can play on an AAU. And I've got girls that have never played a team sport in their life. So we kind of span the spectrum, and they're all learning together.

But what's really interesting is, since it is a new sport, everybody kind of comes in at the same place. So I think it really allows girls to blossom once they find their position or their spot. Where, in most varsity sports, without years of experience coming in, they wouldn't have that same chance. Here, they can walk in and learn, and, as long as they're a good student of the game and a good student in the classroom, they can apply those skills, learn and start getting playing time.

So I think it's pretty cool, especially everybody coming in from different backgrounds. I think the biggest thing is they're all learning to play through contact, some of the peaks and pains that come with that, or the contact that comes just inherently with flag football. They're learning to kind of deal with that and play through that. So it's exciting to see the growth and development.

What differences have you seen from the pilot program to this year?
Just the structure of the game, in terms of how it's played. It's a bigger field, it's a wider field, it's a longer field. There's an additional referee, which I think is always good and helpful. There's down markers, there's clocks, there are scoreboards that weren't always there last year. And I think, defensively, blitzing is so different now. I think it's a different game. The rules being played now are pretty similar to what a lot of other states are playing. So, we're always trying to grab some film and things and what other states are doing and watch that, just to see how the game is different. I personally like this game better. It feels more, footbally to me, as opposed to the old way feeling more like 7-on-7s.

I'm super thankful for the Broncos for helping get all this started. I don't think without that this would be a thing in Colorado or be a thing in other states either if the Denver Broncos and the NFL didn't have this program. I respect everything the Broncos did. It was amazing. I mean, they invested thousands of dollars into uniforms and equipment.

What is your coaching philosophy?
I've been kind of working through what my philosophy is. I've done unified through the Special Olympics, I've been an assistant in middle school football, but this was my first head coaching gig at the varsity level, so I've been trying to process through what my philosophy is, and I would absolutely say it's focused on competition and development. I think those were things that were ingrained in me as a child. I was never a good athlete, to be honest. I rode the bench, but I was always there, I always showed up, I always competed, I did what my coaches told me to do, and I developed. If I went home and complained, my parents said, 'What does your coach tell you to do? You do that.'

I think that constant desire to compete and develop really just kind of stuck with me, and that is a lot of what we do. We always want to compete; we always want to stay together as a team. Over weeks and months and years with us, you will develop, and you will grow if you buy into what we're doing. I do think that is kind of a key to our philosophy. Everybody's got a different philosophy, and for us, we really wanted to develop who we had and who was kind of coming in the pipeline. We want to engage with more student-athletes, and then we can just develop the program overall, because you never know who might not show a ton of promise as a freshman, but all of a sudden, as a sophomore or senior, they've just developed and grown a ton, and now they know how you operate and what you want, and they can be a great player. So we always want to give everybody a chance.

What have the kids you coach taught you?
I am incredibly thankful for the relationships that I have with our staff and with our student-athletes. They have taught me a ton. My girlfriend has an eight-year-old daughter. I do not have any kids and will probably be engaged pretty soon, and working with these student-athletes has taught me a ton about interacting with girls that I didn't know prior, even though I've been in education for 15 years. I know that might kind of sound weird, but they have just taught me so much, I mean, about life, being willing to compete, and showing up every day, smiling. The vast majority show up every day smiling. They've really taught me how to be more open emotionally as well, and also to control my emotions, and how my emotions can be perceived, because some of the ways that I was presenting, I didn't realize were perceived the way that they were. Sometimes I would be intense, and they would sometimes perceive that as aggressive, when, for me, it was just normal, intense coaching. So, I had to learn to adapt, or how I approach them when giving feedback. I couldn't just be like 'do this, and that's it.' I had to engage them more in a discussion, being like, 'OK, what are you seeing here? Here's what I see. Do you see this? What questions do you have?' That was a different model of coaching than I grew up with, but it has really forced me to grow.

What else should people know about flag football?
My dad ran cross country, my mom didn't play sports, but my grandma played half-court basketball in a skirt back in Nowhere, Arkansas, a little, tiny town. I always tell the girls like, be thankful for this opportunity that you have, because my grandma would have been a heck of a flag football player. She's about 5-foot-8 and about 170 pounds and can move well. A good basketball player, she loved sports, and loved football. She would have loved this opportunity. So I always say to the girls, 'be thankful for the opportunity that you have to play this game, because your mom, your grandma, didn't get these same opportunities that you are getting.' They're being trailblazers by learning how to play a new sport and do all these things in a sport that is traditionally considered masculine in our culture. I think we're kind of shifting some of that narrative and learn that it's okay to be competitive, it's okay to play aggressively, it's okay to put yourself out there and enjoy this game and be thankful for the opportunities that you have, that others that came before you didn't have, and play for them in a way too. No, you're not just playing for yourself, you're playing for your team, your family, your school, you're playing for all those things, and you're also playing for people that came before you who didn't get this opportunity, that are happy and excited for you that you get this chance.