Southern Tier Sports ReportELMIRA — For A’Don Allen things are a little different this spring as he is on the field coaching the Elmira flag football team.
The girls’ basketball coach for the Express got his coaching start in football and now he’s coaching the sport again, this time with flag football.
“It’s different,” Allen said. “I actually got my start coaching with football, so it’s kind of full circle to get back to it, in a different kind of way. The energy has been blessed to have three beautiful days for tryouts. We have over 60 kids sign up and we have about 53-54 of them who made it to tryouts. It sucks, because you have to cut, but it’s nice to have some numbers and have some choices and be able to see some things. Obviously, you don’t want to cut kids, but you have to, that’s the difficult part of it.”
Allen has a talented coaching staff around him, including former Elmira football star Eli Thomas, who played D1 football, and Horseheads football offensive coordinator Lou Condon.
“What’s really interesting, I actually coached Eli in modified here and now he’s coaching with me,” Allen said. “It’s fantastic. He brings a wealth of knowledge. He brings some great energy. Coach Condon, obviously OC for Horseheads, obviously he is fantastic at that as well. New era, ish. Just like everything else it’s about winning, but it’s really about having fun and learning. Because it’s still a relatively new sport. We are only going to have six seniors. We are going to be really young and inexperienced, so that’s the fun part of the job this year.”
The big numbers is great for the future of the program.
“There are actually a lot of kids at EDA in 7th and 8th grade who inquired about if they could play, so there’s talke of a modified program (in the future). It seems to be really popular right now and the numbers have been fantastic. The number of kids since September who have inquired has been great. It’s great for the future of the sport. It’s weird, because when I coached football before it was three weeks before a game, now it’s six days. We have to make these cuts, and get to work for a game next week.”
While the team is younger, they do return standout Ella Davlin, who was a key player on their sectional title team a year ago.
“She’s fantastic,” Allen said. “She’s a great leader. She comes in and leads by example and the thing about her, she’s just a great kid too. She plays with a lot of energy. Her, Ava Preston and a couple of the girls who came back from last year have done a really good job ob embracing the kids and understanding that a lot of this is new to the so they are really good with the kids who maybe don’t know what they are doing yet. Ella is fantastic. I am going from calling her name as the announcer to calling plays for her. It’s really kind of cool and she’s put a lot of work in. Her younger sister, Marley, is going to come up and play some quarterback for us so it’s really kind of a family affair for them and they have been working really hard for a long time.”
Allen is excited to see what plays he can come up with for all the players on the team.
“It’s interesting because you watch kids in other sports and you see what they have, but when you get to see them up close it’s like woah,” Allen said. “You see a kid like Emma Lambert and I got to see Kayvonna King in basketball, but to be able to see Kayvonna out here on the football field, it’s a different skillset, but a lot of the same things. We are going to have some fun drawing some things up.”
————
PHOTOS BY BRIAN FEES
PHOTO GALLERY FROM PRACTICE:
