Young women on the sideline sprinted to meet their teammates on the field in a celebratory mob, lifting the black-and-silver trophy above their heads in triumph.<\/p>\n
“This means everything for them,” Mahtomedi Head Coach Nick Sullivan said. “Everything that we do, and all the success, it’s for them. We have a lot of seniors on our team that graduated this weekend, so this kind of a last hurrah for them.<\/p>\n
“One last game, the inaugural season? I mean, this is as big as it gets,” Sullivan added.<\/p>\n
It’s true of the Zephyrs, who became the first team in state history to officially win the girls high school flag football championship.<\/p>\n
It’s true also, though, of 50 \u2014 50! \u2014 other teams that competed this season. After helping launch a pilot program in 2024 with four teams (La Crescent-Hokah, Rosemount, Houston and Pine Island), the Vikings in 2025 looked to expand to a full league \u2014 and expand they did.<\/p>\n
“It’s just been so cool to see the growth,” La Crescent-Hokah senior Savanah Klinski said prior to the final game. “The number of people who have been out here today, it’s just been amazing. Last year we were just a small little group, and now the bleachers are filled. It’s incredible.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Young women on the sideline sprinted to meet their teammates on the field in a celebratory mob, lifting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137841,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2073],"tags":[7,233,259,2529,6383,6384,1025,6,234],"class_list":{"0":"post-137840","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-minnesota-vikings","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-minnesota","10":"tag-minnesota-vikings","11":"tag-minnesotavikings","12":"tag-news-community","13":"tag-news-community-stories","14":"tag-news-index","15":"tag-nfl","16":"tag-vikings"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114700600214506498","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137840\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}