PAL Citywide Flag Football Championships

On Veterans Day, PAL’s Citywide Flag Football season closed with championship games at Team Vick Field in Philadelphia’s Hunting Park neighborhood.  The season, which kicked off with an out-of-school time citywide tournament on Columbus Day in October, included hundreds of kids and teens from each of PAL’s centers throughout the City.

The Veterans Day showdown boasted a third-place matchup between West Philly’s Cobbs Creek PAL and North Philadelphia’s Harrowgate PAL, and a championship game between North Philly’s Fairhill PAL and Wissinoming PAL from the Northeast.

Cobbs Creek PAL, led by Center Directors P/O Darryl Johnson and P/O Cassandra Parks-Devaughn edged out a win over Harrowgate PAL, led by P/O Frank Rivera and P/O Sharon Wells.  In the championship game, P/O Marcus Allen’s Fairhill PAL team proved too much to handle for P/O Brian Younger’s Wissinoming PAL squad.

P/O Allen had an ally in leading his team to victory:  Fairhill PAL is a host site for Up2Us Sports Coach Across America coach, Darrell Daniels, who serves as a role model, mentor, and community leader to the children at Fairhill PAL.   P/O Allen and Coach Darrell make it a point to implement Up2Us Sports’ best coaching practices into all of their athletic programs at the center.  Through sports-based youth development programs, like PAL’s Citywide Flag Football League, coaches instill self-awareness, positive identity, situational awareness, plan B thinking, future focus, discipline, social confidence, and prosocial connections in youth, attributes that Up2Us Sports research shows are key predictors of future success.

Congratulations to Fairhill, and to all participants, for staying safe, off the streets, and committed to a winning culture both on and off the field.