Flag football is taking these suburban coaches to the national stage
In on the ground floor of suburban high school girls flag football, Willowbrook co-head coaches Rachel Karos and Nick Hildreth are heading to the national stage.
They’ll coach some of the top girls in the nation at the USA Football National Team Development Program Select Bowl in Los Angeles, June 18-21.
“Since starting flag football, for both of us it’s been, like, one exciting thing after another,” Karos said.
Karos will work with girls in the 12-and-under Team Development Program and Hildreth with 14U players.
A year after the Chicago Bears helped the Chicago Public League spark girls flag football in 2021, their Willowbrook program was among 109 teams statewide.
The Warriors won that 2022 state title under Illinois High School Association emerging sport status, and finished third in 2023. Last fall Willowbrook reached the quarterfinals in the first IHSA state series, in which 154 teams participated.
Tracie Henry, the IHSA assistant executive director in charge of girls flag football, anticipated 46 more teams this fall.
“We’ve seen some great talent in Illinois. We’re going to see some great talent out there,” Karos said of the Select Bowl. “I think it’s going to be equally a learning experience as well as an opportunity to show our skills.”
Players chosen from Talent ID camps across the country were invited to fill four teams apiece, boys and girls, in 12U, 14U and 16U, plus four teams for 18U girls and women 23-and-under.
They’ll participate in competitions, team practices, team building and meetings, play and strategy walk-throughs and off-the-field sessions such as off-season training and mental performance.
“It’s kind of a segue or pathway for players looking to do USA National teams,” Karos said.
Hildreth and Karos, who also coach Willowbrook softball together, have attended USA Football events in the past, but their first official duty came in a Talent ID Camp last winter at the Sport Zone Dome in Aurora.
While they were there, they also were being evaluated by USA Football. They passed muster, proven by the congratulatory emails both received May 19 asking them to work with the girls in Los Angeles.
“It’s just exciting,” said Hildreth, a 2000 Willowbrook graduate who is the Warriors varsity boys football coach as well.
A receiver in his playing days, upon graduating from Lake Forest College in 2005 he owned Foresters records for receptions and reception yardage.
“Talking with Coach Karos before, it’s been a blur, multiple years of opportunities that this has presented. Really, I’m just excited that a bunch of these athletes are getting opportunities to be on a big stage, a major stage,” Hildreth said.
A three-sport athlete at Naperville North, Class of 2001, Karos now plays with the Chicago Metropolitan Sports Association’s Chicago Surge women’s flag football team.
She also is a quarterback for the Chicago Winds of the Women’s National Football Conference. The Winds are Chicago’s first entry in women’s tackle football since the Chicago Force ended in 2017. Karos will head to the WNFC playoffs June 5 in Nashville.
“Since I’ve coached football I feel like I haven’t been able to get enough football,” she said.
Such statements about what Hildreth called “the greatest game in the world” are why he is excited about girls flag football in general and specifically this USA Football assignment.
“For these girls to get these opportunities — and some of the best football players that I’ve coached have been females — and for my daughter (Florence) to get to look up to a group of girls in the community and then at the national level, it’s something that didn’t exist for Coach Karos, it didn’t exist for my wife (former Willowbrook softball ace pitcher Abbie Coppersmith), even though they’re great athletes,” he said.
“And it comes for these girls.”
Setting a high bar
During a 9-0 Class 3A soccer victory over Rockford Auburn on May 20, Warren senior Addison Stanciak set a program record with 27 goals in a season.
The St. Louis University recruit, who scored 4 goals in the game, eclipsed Giuleana Lopez’s 2004 record when she converted a Kate Mondejar pass and navigated past the Auburn goalkeeper to end the game at the 47-minute mark.
Stanciak, Warren’s 2025 female athlete of the year and a two-time soccer coaches association all-stater (this season’s award is due out soon), finished with four program records — 28 goals and 62 points this season, and 78 goals and 182 points in her four varsity seasons.
doberhelman@dailyherald.com