Flag football season ended too soon, but not before a thrilling moment with this NFL star
Jaynah Rodriguez didn’t get to hoist a state championship trophy this season. She didn’t get to win Miss Flag Football, like she had hoped to, or pass the 10,000-yard mark in her four-year career as the starting quarterback for Miami High’s flag football team.
She did, however, get Russell Wilson to complement her passing ability.
“That,” she said, “was live.”
With Super Bowl 54 in Miami Gardens this year, the NFL hosted a flag football tournament for South Florida teams in January at the Super Bowl Experience. The Stingarees and three other teams from across Miami battled at the Miami Beach Convention Center. Wilson watched with Ciara, and Seattle Seahawks teammates Shaquill Griffin and Shaquem Griffin.
Wilson positioned himself on the Stingarees’ sideline and hopped into the huddle to fire up the team. When Rodriguez dropped in a perfectly placed touchdown pass on the undersized field, Wilson took notice.
“That was a good pass,” the Seattle Seahawks star said to her. She was stunned and then excited.
“I was pumped,” the quarterback said. “I was like, Whoa, he commented on that?”
The Stingarees had legitimate state-title aspirations before the COVID-19 pandemic abruptly halted its season in March. The preseason run in Miami Beach vaulted them into a 3-0 start to the regular season. FloridaHSFootball.com had the Stingarees as the No. 3 team in Class 2A at the time the season was suspended. They were hotly anticipating a meeting with Monsignor Pace, the No. 3 team in Class 1A, scheduled for the week after they realized their season — and their quest for redemption after a historic run in 2019 — was likely over.
Flag football still hasn’t been a fixture of Florida for long. The Florida High School Athletic Association first crowned a champion in 2003 and the state only expanded to two classifications for the 2016 season. Only 11 different schools have ever won a state title and none from Miami-Dade County have hoisted the trophy.
The past few years, though, were filled with close calls. Edison fell to Tampa Robinson in the Class 1A championship in both 2017 and 2018. Last year, the Stingarees reached the final four for the first time in program history before falling to Park Vista in the 2A semifinals.
“Just because of how it ended last year — went to state, lost in the first round — and they had a chip on their shoulder that they’re not losing it this year,” assistant coach Sedric Maynard said. “They’re going back and they’re going to win it.”
Rodriguez was at the center of the Stingarees’ quest. She had been the their starting quarterback since her freshman season in 2017, a year after the they reached the region playoffs for the first time, and she was rewriting the school’s nascent record book.
Through three seasons, Rodriguez threw for about 8,000 yards. The 10,000-yard threshold was well within reach as she began her senior season, and she wanted to win the state’s Miss Flag Football award while leading the Stingarees to a state title.
“I was telling her, ‘You know, you’re in competition with Colleen for that,’” Maynard said.
It was this senior tandem — Rodriguez and wide receiver Colleen Bucknor — which inspired so much hope for the Stingarees in 2020. Bucknor, who has signed a national letter of intent to play basketball for the Central Florida Knights in the fall, was a first-team all-county selection by the Miami Herald in 2019 after racking up 957 receiving yards and nine touchdowns. She was the favorite target for Rodriguez, who threw for 2,794 yards and 24 touchdowns as a junior on the way to first-team all-county honors.
Bucknor was ultimately fortunate. She’s a basketball player, first and foremost, and had come tantalizingly close to state titles in both her sophomore and junior seasons for the Stingarees. As a sophomore in 2018, Bucknor had a last-second putback attempt hang on the rim before bouncing out and leaving the Stingarees with a one-point loss to Port Orange Spruce Creek in the Class 9A championship.
In February, Bucknor finally got over the hump, leading the Stingarees to the Class 7A championship as a senior. If the season had lasted just two weeks longer, Bucknor might have never gotten a chance to even win her elusive girls’ basketball title. For her, flag football season was a chance for a last hurrah with some of her basketball teammates who play both sports, like fellow wide receiver Darria Whitley. It was a chance to the Stingarees to stake their claim at superiority in South Florida.
“We were trying to go for best girls’ athletic program,” Bucknor said.
Although the FHSAA didn’t officially scrap the spring season until April, the end started to feel inevitable in March. In a 24-hour stretch, the NBA, NHL and MLB all suspended their seasons indefinitely and the NCAA canceled all its spring sports.
The Stingarees had a game a few days later, knowing their season was likely on its last legs. They knew their much-anticipated meeting with the Spartans scheduled for the following week — a battle for county supremacy — probably wouldn’t happen, so coach Sam Baumgarten made it clear this game against Hialeah Gardens might be it.
“Our coach was like, ‘I don’t think we’re going to play. We don’t have no more season,’ so we basically put our whole heart out and played hard that last game,” Rodriguez said. “We remembered that game.”
The Stingarees won 33-19 and never even practiced again.
Since the season ended, the team has gathered for the occasional group video chat and they’re eagerly awaiting the OK to return to a field somewhere to get together, and run routes and throw passes.
They’d also like to still have an end-of-the-year banquet, too, but if they can’t, there is a backup plan.
“One girl said,” Maynard recalled, “‘If we can’t go out this year, what we’re going to do is everybody’s gong to by the same food and go on Zoom and watch each other eat.’”
Other notables
▪ Monsignor Pace finished as South Florida’s top-ranked team in the FloridaHSFootball rankings. The Spartans were No. 7 in the state when the season halted. A year ago in 2019, quarterback Miranda Fernandez accounted for 44 total touchdowns as a junior.
▪ Dr. Krop was another top-10 team in the FloridaHSFootball rankings, led by wide receiver Kirra Magana, who was coming of a 15-touchdown season.
▪ Senior-laden Cooper City was one of Broward County’s top teams before the season abruptly ended. The Cowboys had four seniors, including running back Kimberly Slinkosky and wide receiver Annie Clark, both of whom were first-team all-county selections by the Herald last season. Slinkosky was also the Herald’s Player of the Year in Broward.
This story was originally published May 19, 2020 at 12:12 PM.
