AURORA – The Heritage flag football team, coached by Kirt Woodman, is 8-2 and ranked No. 6 in 5A.
Today, he is being recognized as the Broncos High School Flag Coach of the Week. The Denver Broncos and CHSAA will continue to honor one flag football coach and one tackle football coach each week throughout the season.
Throughout the year, all Coach of the Week honorees will be recognized on the field during a pregame ceremony at Broncos home games.
Q&A with Kirt Woodman:
How did you become involved with flag football, and how did you become the head coach at Heritage?
I've been at Heritage for 12 years, but I've been teaching and coaching a variety of different sports in Colorado now close to 20 years. My two daughters, Annie and Amelia, they've kind of changed my perspective on coaching. Being a girl dad has kind of changed my perspective about sports and especially my views on helping empower young women through athletics, and it's something I've become incredibly passionate about. Taking over the job here at Heritage, I saw girls that really wanted to have some success and were excited about the sport.
How would you describe your coaching style or philosophy?
When I took over and I had my first parent meeting, I made a simple pledge to the parents that was I'm going to coach their daughters the way I would want my own daughters to be coached. Number one, we're going to build relationships, and we're going to pay attention to details. We're going to hold kids to high expectations and coach them hard, but when we correct something, we're going to give them very specific ways to improve. Our boys football coach, Tyler Knoblock, has a line that I've stolen, "if it ain't fun, it ain't football." The girls know that we're going to have a good time, but we're going to coach them hard and hold them to expectations. Finally, just trying to surround myself with good assistant coaches who believe in what we're doing. It's about relationships with positivity and empowering these girls to believe that they can be successful.
You've competed in about 2/3 of the season so far, and you've already doubled the number of wins this program had from last year. In your opinion, what do you think the biggest reason is for this change?
Our coaches have worked incredibly hard to put the girls in the best position to be as successful as possible, but obviously, the biggest reason for our success is all about the girls. They've worked so hard, been extremely coachable, and willing to embrace some new ideas. We also have an incredible group of seniors that are great leaders. I've got basically five senior captains because we just couldn't pick among all of them: Mia Kidd, Hayley Prange, Addy Buseck, Zoe Yazzie, and Gianna Dye. They're just making plays for us and holding the younger kids accountable. My quarterback, Maddy Walcott, she just makes plays, and Adalie Seibel, she's making plays all over the field for us. The girls have really been the reason for that success.
Did you have high expectations coming into this year? Have they changed at all as the season has progressed?
The goal is always the same: Are we playing the best that we can possibly play and are we getting better? For us, it's always about our next play and our next game instead of worrying about what the long-term out outlook is. We gave up a touchdown, how do we focus on answering right away? We won a league game, how do we focus on winning that next league game? It's just that next game, next play mentality.
Three of last year's four state semifinalists were from the Continental League. How is it competing in such a competitive league?
You got to respect your opponents and respect what the Continental League has done for flag football in the state. It's about building a mentality in our girls that you can't be afraid to go out and try to compete with these girls and some of these teams. I've really tried to embed in them a belief that they are capable of going out there and making plays. The other piece with that is I have tried to empower these girls to understand that it's OK to make a mistake. If you go out there on the field and you're afraid to make mistakes, it's not going to help you play at your best. The Continental League is incredible, it's one of those iron sharpens iron mentalities. You're only going to get better by playing against the best, and our girls have embraced that challenge.
With some strong games waiting for you at the end of the season, how do you keep your team motivated to finish strong?
I told the girls at the beginning of the season, "you should go into this season with the expectation that we are good enough to make the playoffs." We've got No. 1 and No. 2 next week, but we're not focused on those games right now. Our mindset is, can we take care of business tomorrow night and then Saturday? This is that time of the season where it starts to feel a little bit like a grind. We're starting to deal with injuries, and as a coach you have to make sure that you're doing things to help them enjoy the season and stay hungry for that next game.
Is there anything we didn't get a chance to highlight or anything you want to shout out?
The biggest thing is we have an incredible community here, and I'm excited for them to have a little bit of recognition. We're really trying to extend the positivity that happens here at Heritage High School. I'm a lifelong Broncos fan, and having the Broncos recognize our program is really a dream come true for me. The real meaning of this is the pride I have in our program and the people who put in countless hours to help us to be successful. Broncos Nation, if you haven't had a chance to go out and watch flag football, you should go out and watch it because it's a beautiful game. These girls just compete their tails off and they work hard.
