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| NEWS!!! |
News article in Peabody Weekly news!!!! 5/26/05
Capture the flag!!!
Peabody youth flag football League is flourishing
by Jeremy Gottlieb
In England, football is soccer and the national pastime. American
football is just some barbaric “sport” loved by us Yankees.
Don’t tell that to Peabody’s Austin Bradshaw. A native of
Lancaster, England, Bradshaw, along with his wife, Janel Shea-
Bradshaw, is a little more than a year into running the Peabody
Youth Flag Football League, an enterprise sponsored by the NFL
that has seen a staggering amount of success in its early stages.
Bradshaw started the league last spring with an enrollment of 30
kids. Now, he and his wife oversee an operation consisting of 270
boys and girls divided into 28 teams. The children are split into
age group divisions of 6-to-8-year-olds, 9-to-11-year-olds and 12-
to14-year-olds and games are played Tuesday, Wednesday and
Thursday afternoons from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. at the Higgins Middle
School. Bradshaw, 28, doesn’t seem the least bit phased by the
enormous, early growth of his program.
“I played flag football in England for six years and for the National
team before I moved here and I kept playing after I arrived,” he
said. “I have a friend who was running a similar program in
Londonderry, N.H., which I was helping out with. I had just become
a substitute teacher at the Higgins School so I thought I might
start my own league right here. Right away the parents were
coming to us and complimenting us on what we’d done and things
just got bigger. As long as the kids have fun, it’s a good thing.”
The league is a chapter of the NFL youth flag football program,
which was created in 1996 and was designed to “teach children
the basics of football, from snapping the ball to throwing to
catching.” The season is eight weeks long and runs twice a year –
in the fall and in the spring. There are six weeks of regular season
games followed by one week of playoff action and then, in the
eighth week, a title game. Each child who participates receives a
certificate of excellence directly from the NFL and those who play
in the championship game also take home a trophy. Bradshaw
said that when he started the league, the NFL sent him several
packets of information detailing both how to get things going and
how to steer the ship. All the equipment is provided by the league’
s office in Los Angeles.
Bradshaw’s enrollment swelled to 170 last fall so the further
upswing this spring is not necessarily a surprise. What does seem
surprising is how he has fully realized the operation in such a
short period of time. With such a heavy demand hovering over his
head, one might expect Bradshaw to struggle a bit to keep up. Not
so.
One day in October, using a link on the Yahoo! home page,
Bradshaw went to work. The site builder link gave him a basic web
template and 12 hours later, he had himself a website.
Go to www.peabodyyouthflagfootball.com on the web and you will
be treated to a full-service site all about the league designed and
maintained entirely by Bradshaw and only Bradshaw. Readers will
find write-ups on specific games, a scoreboard and league
standings, team rosters, photos, links to other sites pertaining to
flag football, the league’s mission statement and other
administrative and contact information.
“I thought it would be a good idea to try to keep the kids involved
with scores and standings and photos and such after so many
more signed up in the fall, so I started it up,” said Bradshaw. “It’s
just like nfl.com or any other sports league website. I’ve just been
building it up day by day, trying to add new things to it. It’s the first
time I’ve ever done anything like this but it looks like it’s working.”
Bradshaw, now a full-time substitute teacher in the Peabody
school system, has even bigger goals for his league. In the fall,
games will be played on Saturday mornings, a time slot he feels
will allow more kids to sign up and more parents to get involved.
Additionally, the NFL holds national championship competitions
every November in Florida. The two teams that reach the finals in
each division in a specific region qualify for a regional
tournament, the winner of which receives an all expenses paid trip
to Nationals that are aired on ESPN and were hosted last year by
former NFL star Boomer Esiason. Last year’s regional was held at
Giants Stadium in New Jersey, but Bradshaw said he’s been in
discussions with the Patriots to hold the next one in Foxboro.
Furthermore, Bradshaw would like to compile an all-star team
comprised only of girls to the regional, something he sees
possible as there are now enough girls participating in the league
to create an all-girl 12-to-14-year-old division.
Ask Janel Shea-Bradshaw, 33, about the league and she says it’s
fate. Shea-Bradshaw, an accounts payable administrator at
American Renal Associates in Danvers, likes to tell the story of
how she and her husband met, believing the circumstances
directly led to the formation and success of the league.
“It was the Mud Bowl non-contact game up in North Conway (N.H.)
three years ago,” she recalled. “Austin was playing and I was a
cheerleader and that’s how we met. It will be three years this
Labor Day. Funny how these things work out.”
And all for a registration fee of just $45, up only $5 from the
program’s inception because, as Bradshaw said, “it’s not about
the money.” The Bradshaws have been married 18 months and
the Peabody Youth Flag Football League is their rapidly growing
baby. They don’t have any actual kids of their own yet, but Austin
Bradshaw knows for sure, “that when we do, they’ll be playing.”
Capture the flag!!!
Peabody youth flag football League is flourishing
by Jeremy Gottlieb
In England, football is soccer and the national pastime. American
football is just some barbaric “sport” loved by us Yankees.
Don’t tell that to Peabody’s Austin Bradshaw. A native of
Lancaster, England, Bradshaw, along with his wife, Janel Shea-
Bradshaw, is a little more than a year into running the Peabody
Youth Flag Football League, an enterprise sponsored by the NFL
that has seen a staggering amount of success in its early stages.
Bradshaw started the league last spring with an enrollment of 30
kids. Now, he and his wife oversee an operation consisting of 270
boys and girls divided into 28 teams. The children are split into
age group divisions of 6-to-8-year-olds, 9-to-11-year-olds and 12-
to14-year-olds and games are played Tuesday, Wednesday and
Thursday afternoons from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. at the Higgins Middle
School. Bradshaw, 28, doesn’t seem the least bit phased by the
enormous, early growth of his program.
“I played flag football in England for six years and for the National
team before I moved here and I kept playing after I arrived,” he
said. “I have a friend who was running a similar program in
Londonderry, N.H., which I was helping out with. I had just become
a substitute teacher at the Higgins School so I thought I might
start my own league right here. Right away the parents were
coming to us and complimenting us on what we’d done and things
just got bigger. As long as the kids have fun, it’s a good thing.”
The league is a chapter of the NFL youth flag football program,
which was created in 1996 and was designed to “teach children
the basics of football, from snapping the ball to throwing to
catching.” The season is eight weeks long and runs twice a year –
in the fall and in the spring. There are six weeks of regular season
games followed by one week of playoff action and then, in the
eighth week, a title game. Each child who participates receives a
certificate of excellence directly from the NFL and those who play
in the championship game also take home a trophy. Bradshaw
said that when he started the league, the NFL sent him several
packets of information detailing both how to get things going and
how to steer the ship. All the equipment is provided by the league’
s office in Los Angeles.
Bradshaw’s enrollment swelled to 170 last fall so the further
upswing this spring is not necessarily a surprise. What does seem
surprising is how he has fully realized the operation in such a
short period of time. With such a heavy demand hovering over his
head, one might expect Bradshaw to struggle a bit to keep up. Not
so.
One day in October, using a link on the Yahoo! home page,
Bradshaw went to work. The site builder link gave him a basic web
template and 12 hours later, he had himself a website.
Go to www.peabodyyouthflagfootball.com on the web and you will
be treated to a full-service site all about the league designed and
maintained entirely by Bradshaw and only Bradshaw. Readers will
find write-ups on specific games, a scoreboard and league
standings, team rosters, photos, links to other sites pertaining to
flag football, the league’s mission statement and other
administrative and contact information.
“I thought it would be a good idea to try to keep the kids involved
with scores and standings and photos and such after so many
more signed up in the fall, so I started it up,” said Bradshaw. “It’s
just like nfl.com or any other sports league website. I’ve just been
building it up day by day, trying to add new things to it. It’s the first
time I’ve ever done anything like this but it looks like it’s working.”
Bradshaw, now a full-time substitute teacher in the Peabody
school system, has even bigger goals for his league. In the fall,
games will be played on Saturday mornings, a time slot he feels
will allow more kids to sign up and more parents to get involved.
Additionally, the NFL holds national championship competitions
every November in Florida. The two teams that reach the finals in
each division in a specific region qualify for a regional
tournament, the winner of which receives an all expenses paid trip
to Nationals that are aired on ESPN and were hosted last year by
former NFL star Boomer Esiason. Last year’s regional was held at
Giants Stadium in New Jersey, but Bradshaw said he’s been in
discussions with the Patriots to hold the next one in Foxboro.
Furthermore, Bradshaw would like to compile an all-star team
comprised only of girls to the regional, something he sees
possible as there are now enough girls participating in the league
to create an all-girl 12-to-14-year-old division.
Ask Janel Shea-Bradshaw, 33, about the league and she says it’s
fate. Shea-Bradshaw, an accounts payable administrator at
American Renal Associates in Danvers, likes to tell the story of
how she and her husband met, believing the circumstances
directly led to the formation and success of the league.
“It was the Mud Bowl non-contact game up in North Conway (N.H.)
three years ago,” she recalled. “Austin was playing and I was a
cheerleader and that’s how we met. It will be three years this
Labor Day. Funny how these things work out.”
And all for a registration fee of just $45, up only $5 from the
program’s inception because, as Bradshaw said, “it’s not about
the money.” The Bradshaws have been married 18 months and
the Peabody Youth Flag Football League is their rapidly growing
baby. They don’t have any actual kids of their own yet, but Austin
Bradshaw knows for sure, “that when we do, they’ll be playing.”
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