Florida <\/a>now has more than 360 schools participating, making it one of the most established states for the sport.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/5ecd7577cb2657bfd99c0327967f8241.jpeg\"\/)
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“When we first started our preseason classic, we had 32 teams and 800 athletes. A couple of weeks ago when we hosted, we [had] 126 and over 3,000 athletes. So, this year, our serious football invitation, it’s our second year for it. We have eight of the top teams in the nation. I would say definitely in the state over 200 athletes,” Zak Zumbiel, senior manager of community impact for the Buccaneers, said.<\/p>\n
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Big picture view<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a growing sport that has girls participating and staying in something that will help them grow long-term.<\/p>\n
“We brought 12 girls down here, started playing yesterday. We had one game yesterday, we have two today. And when I told the girls they got invited to this, they were ecstatic. They love coming to Tampa,” Mike Pixley said.<\/p>\n
Pixley is head coach of the Belleview Rattlers, one of the teams participating in the tournament.<\/p>\n
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This gives the opportunity to show what they\u2019re made of on the field and beyond.<\/p>\n
“I think there’s so much to be learned from sports, whether it’s discipline, tenacity, resilience. We see it in our locker room. The character of our players is as important to us as their performance on the field, and so that’s what this mission is all about. The life lessons that sports teaches you so that you can become a leader and give back to this community in the future,” Sanchez said.<\/p>\n
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The Source<\/p>\n
Information for the article was gathered by conducting live interviews with event organizers from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers organization and by receiving information from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ She is Football website.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Brief The Tampa Bay Buccaneers hosted their second annual “She Is Football Weekend,” aimed at encouraging young…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":799377,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2077],"tags":[211,4530,7,112049,54365,6,704,250,2597,2596],"class_list":{"0":"post-799376","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tampa-bay-buccaneers","8":"tag-buccaneers","9":"tag-flag-football","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-football-weekend","12":"tag-leadership-skills","13":"tag-nfl","14":"tag-tampa-bay","15":"tag-tampa-bay-buccaneers","16":"tag-tampabay","17":"tag-tampabaybuccaneers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116190762302930072","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799376","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=799376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/799377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=799376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=799376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=799376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}