By Kim Chaffin, Founder & Author of Breaking the Huddle Education
I have loved football for as long as I can remember. I grew up in West Texas where football isn’t just a sport – it is the heartbeat of the community. Friday night lights are sacred. I absorbed every piece of it. I studied the game. I understood the game. And, in 1996 I loved it enough to walk onto a field full of boys and try out for my seventh grade team. I didn’t just make the team. I led the team as the quarterback, and while that one season was my only season, I never stopped loving the sport or believing that girls belonged in it.
So, you would think that someone like me – a lifelong football fanatic, a multi-sport athlete, a coach, an athletic director, and now the author of a children’s book rooted in that very story – would have known about the Women’s Football Alliance (WFA), the Women’s National Football Conference (WNFC), and the Utah Girls Tackle Football League. Or, you would think I would have known about powerful women like Coach Odessa Jenkins, Lisa King, Lois Cook, and so many others who have been building something extraordinary on fields that the world wasn’t paying nearly enough attention to, or about incredible young girls like Samantha Gordon, who have been blazing trails on the gridiron in ways that would have made my seventh grade self completely lose her mind!
I didn’t know. And, I have to be honest – that stopped me in my tracks.
How did I not know this existed?
That’s the question I keep asking myself. I have spent nearly two decades in education and athletics. I have coached, I have directed programs, I have watched sports evolve in real time. And, somehow the world of women’s tackle football – a world that has been growing, competing, and championing itself for years – lived almost entirely outside of my awareness.
That’s not a criticism of anyone. It’s a reflection of how much further we still have to go when it comes to visibility for women in football. If someone as close to the sport as I am didn’t know, imagine how many girls growing up right now don’t know either.
What it made me think about
When I discovered these leagues and these women, my mind immediately went back to that seventh grade field. And, I thought: What if I had known? What if there had been a clear path, a girls league, a visible future in the sport I loved so much?
Because here’s the truth: I stopped playing football not because I stopped loving it, but because there was nowhere to go with it. Continuing to play tackle football into high school would have raised concerns – for my parents, and honestly, for me too. There was no girls league. There was no obvious next chapter. So, I channeled everything into basketball, which I excelled at and am grateful for. But football never left my heart.
If flag football had been what it is today, if I had seen what young girls are doing on those fields right now, I genuinely believe I would have kept playing. Flag football is exploding, and for good reason. The fact that it will make its Olympic debut at the 2028 Los Angeles Games is one of the most exciting things I have heard in years. That is a moment that is going to change everything for a generation of girls who are growing up right now wondering if there is a place for them in this sport.
There is. There absolutely is.
Two paths. Both inspiring. Both needed.
What strikes me most as I learn more about this world is that there are really two powerful paths running alongside each other right now – and both of them matter deeply.
There is the path of women’s tackle football – the Women’s Football Alliance (WFA) and the Women’s National Football Conference (WNFC). Teams like the Texas Elite Spartans of the WNFC, who I had the privilege of meeting in early March 2026, led by Coach Odessa Jenkins, are competing at the highest level and proving that women belong on that field in full pads, running routes, calling plays, and hitting hard. These women are elite athletes and trailblazers, and the young girls watching them are learning something that no textbook can teach – that the door is open and someone who looks like them has already walked through it.
And there is the path of flag football – growing at the youth level, expanding into high schools and colleges, and now heading to the biggest stage in sports. This is a pathway that is accessible, that is visible, and that is giving girls a continuous journey in the game from the time they are old enough to run a route, all the way to an Olympic podium, if they work for it.
Both paths are inspiring. Both paths are necessary. And, both paths already have pioneers who have been running this race — in some cases for nearly two decades — long before Breaking the Huddle was ever a thought in my mind.
That’s where Breaking the Huddle comes in
I wrote this book because of a moment that happened thirty years ago on a football field in Smyer, Texas, and because of a father I lost who believed in me and that moment before anyone else did. His passing is what cause me to put pen to paper – and I have come to believe that all of it, the 1996 tryout, the years in education and coaching, losing my dad, was always meant to lead here. I understand more clearly than ever what Breaking the Huddle is actually for.
It isn’t here to start something. The women of the WFA, the WNFC, the coaches, the players, the families who showed up long before the spotlight did – they started it. They have been carrying this thing on their backs and they deserve every bit of recognition for that.
Breaking the Huddle is here to add fuel to that fire, to amplify the message that is already burning, to walk into the huddle that these incredible pioneers built and push alongside them – in classrooms, on sidelines, in the hands of six-year-olds who are just beginning to understand what’s possible for them. Our character Kaycee carries one truth on every page: being yourself is your superpower, and every woman who has ever strapped on a helmet, blown a whistle, sat on executive boards and C-suites for this sport has been living that truth out loud, whether the world has caught up to pay attention (YET) or not.
As we build upcoming partnerships with WFA leagues and teams, and as the curriculum series takes shape to support sports literacy and leadership in schools and communities, I am thinking about all of it – the flag football fields, the tackle leagues, the Olympic dream, and every little girl who just needs someone to hand her the story first.
This movement didn’t start with me. But there is no turning back now – and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I am honored to join this huddle, and I intend to do everything in my power to help all of women’s football win.
Kim Chaffin is the Founder and Author of Breaking the Huddle Education, LLC — a sports literacy, leadership, and empowerment movement for the next generation. Learn more at breakingthehuddleeducation.com.
