AURORA – There’s a new team on the flag football scene this season with the Poudre School District squad.
 
And it made a name for itself last week improving to 6-1 with wins of 12-7 over previously-undefeated Legacy and 25-13 over Northglenn, which had been 6-2. With its only loss 7-6 to defending 4A champion Mountain View, Poudre School District is ranked No. 12 in 5A.
 
For his efforts, Aaron Waters has been recognized by being named the CHSAA/Denver Broncos Flag Football Coach of the Week.
 
Q & A with Poudre School District coach Aaron Waters:

Q: What is your coaching background – where else have you coached and what other sports?
A: I’m a long-time track coach here in Fort Collins. I was at Fossil Ridge as the sprints coach for a long time and took the (track & field) head coaching job for 2022 and 2023, but I’d completed my master’s in school counseling at the end of 2022 and got hired at Fort Collins High School. So I stepped away to align my coaching with my work – and the (Fossil Ridge) girls went ahead and were second in the state in 2024 and won the state title last year. That gives me a lot of confidence in what we were doing as coaches there. I coach sprints and jumps now at Fort Collins. I coached tackle football at Fossil from about 2013 to 2018, so I’ve got that background. And then it felt natural to kind of align the two, the football knowledge with the athleticism and speed knowledge. Speed is definitely something we focus on.
 
Q: How did you wind up as the flag football coach for Poudre School District?
A: Conversations were happening above me for sure about starting a program. I had a random conversation with the athletic director one day, and maybe a month later the job was available, so he and I talked and I went for it. I let him know I would prioritize speed and athleticism, and I knew the opportunity we had, with the athletes that we had available to us. We also knew we could do it the right way, that we could set the culture the right way that would then allow this to break up into two or three teams in coming years. It was a pretty big thing to take on, but a really cool thing to take on, too.
 
Q: Which schools have supplied the players for this team?
A: Most of our girls are from Fossil Ridge and Fort Collins High Schools, but we’ve also got quite a few from Rocky Mountain and Poudre, and Wellington and Timnath, and then we’ve got one from Colorado Early Colleges. So all together seven schools, six of them comprehensive high schools.
 
Q: It had to be quite an undertaking to start pulling it all together. What steps did you take?
A: It was kind of a grass-roots thing where we had to get all the athletic directors at the high schools and the middle schools to kind of spread the word. I did a lot of talking at track meets to the coaches in the city asking, ‘Who are your fast girls?’ We tried to get a lot of them, and then we really focused on soccer and basketball players as well because I felt those skill sets were pretty applicable. In April and May we were really hammering it. It was talking to a ton of coaches, getting the word out, hanging fliers all over. We had two interest meetings and at the first meeting we had 60 or 70 families, so we knew at that moment it was going to be a big thing.
 
Q: How has introducing the sport, and teaching the game, gone with your players?
A: A fond memory we have is there was a moment over the summer where I said, ‘And if this happens, it’s a pick-six.’ And then I had to take a step back and say, ‘Which is an interception returned for a touchdown.’ And then another step back to say, ‘Which means, they threw it to the wrong team.’

Q: How many girls do you have in your program?
A: We have 58, so we have a full varsity, JV and C team of about 20 girls each.
 
Q: How do you get up to speed with everything that’s involved with coaching the sport?
A: It’s a cool learning curve. Our coaches on staff who have coached soccer and basketball have a little bit of a leg up because it does lend itself to those sports as far as covering ground and space. But there’s a ton of applicability between tackle and flag football as far as the concepts go, how you run a defense. But there are a lot of little wrinkles that don’t work in this game that work in tackle and vice-versa. It was kind of a science experiment over the summer figuring out, ‘Is this going to work?’ It was cool to have the girls alongside us for that. One of our team standards is ‘Trust the Process,’ and we said, ‘we’re going to try some stuff that we may never run, and then there will be times in games where we’ll say, This is what I want you to do, even though you’ve never done it before.’

Q: What is your coaching style?
A: I’m a school counselor, so I’m very focused on person-first, trying to be transformational instead of transactional. We want to go win and compete at the highest level, but it’s all about making sure that the girls have a great learning experience, that they’ve got a connection to school – research shows that the more connected you are to your school, the more likely you are to graduate, graduate on time, graduate with options, etc. … It’s unique being a district-wide team, because it’s not necessarily a connection to their school, but it’s still being connected to the educational process. … And then I’m very much about saying, ‘Take a breath.’ The first thing I said to them before our first game was that there would be a moment that you need to walk up to someone and say, ‘Take a breath.’ You’re going to have to walk up to your coaches and say, ‘Take a breath.’ So we all have a reminder to just settle down for a moment and we’ll be OK.

Q: How have you seen flag football impact the lives of your players?
A: One of the coolest things is that basically everyone we talk to – the girls, their families, all of our fans, the educators around us – everyone is so excited about it. Everybody is complimentary. It’s not that they aren’t in other sports … But here everybody is having so much fun, there’s so much joy. It’s something I really wanted to have happen. I wanted that massive culture of enjoyment so that we could grow this for the long term, so to see that happening is really cool.

Q: You’re off to a great start at 6-1 and had two very good wins last week, was this the expectation for this team or are you exceeding expectations?
A: Being a district-wide team, and I believe Poudre School District is one of the best athletic districts in the state, I did expect some success. And the girls we got to come out from other sports, we’ve got some of the fastest girls – including the fastest girl in the state (Addyson Smith) – and we’ve got high-level basketball players and soccer players. So I knew if we got them going in the right direction that we could be in a really good spot. Defensively, we kind of knew that we would be outstanding because of the athletes we have on that side and how we’re teaching them. We thought that in most games, if we could just score a little bit, we would most likely win. That’s played out. The only game we lost, we only scored once and didn’t get a PAT. Even in our tight games, there’s never been a moment when I felt like we were going to lose because I have so much trust in our defense and what our defensive coordinator is doing.

Q: What are your goals for the rest of the season?
A: We’ve only got about 2 ½ weeks left for the majority of our team, but we are talking about playing the last two Saturdays of the season at the varsity level. The expectation is still high. The expectation is that no matter who we’re playing, we go out to improve ourselves and do the little things right. We’re also working on the things we need to work on. We’re not going to just stick to everything we already do well, we’re going to put ourselves in some uncomfortable spots to try and grow through that.