MOODY, Ala. —
The Moody flag football team is unstoppable right now. The Blue Devils are 16-0 on the season and ranked seventh in the nation, the first team to be nationally ranked in any sport at the school.
“We definitely think about like the history, but like overall we preach about one game at a time, don’t think about it too much. Just go out there, have fun,” quarterback Serenity Rutledge said.
Rutledge is just one of the many talented players head coach Wren Moore has to work with.
“It leaves me speechless I sometimes don’t know where they got the moves, I sometimes don’t know where they got the hands or the feet, but I know that they have worked hard enough to be able to move like that,” Wren Moore said.
For this team, it’s taken a lot of early mornings and late nights to be this good.
“We work day in, day out. We were here at 6 a.m, all summer, three days a week,” Kennedy Hockman said.
This group’s put in work for the last three years, going from upcoming program to the force it is now.
“Everything was a work in progress. The first year we lost state, then the second year we won state. It was just all about rebuilding and now this year we have the target on our back,” Hockman said.
Their success has led to interest growing not just in the team, but the sport as a whole around the area.
“Our park league, they had enough girls to make a female league,” Moore said. “I tell them every day like that’s something to be proud of. That’s what I look at; I don’t look at the numbers, I don’t look at, you know, the trophies, but the way they’re impacting the girls under them is crazy to me.”
Young kids in Moody look up to the Blue Devils like heroes, and it’s this team’s hope those kids learn from them.
“I hope they take our leadership, I hope they see our bonds. I hope they look for that in their friendships and their teams,” Hockman said.
They learn what it means to be a team and what this sport can provide.
“I feel like those are kind of like my sisters. I feel like we’ve built this bond and I feel like we’re just tight overall on and off the field,” Rutledge said.
This team is a family on and off the field.
“It’s basically like I have 22 daughters,” Moore said.
These Blue Devils are a shining example of the power of female athletes.
“My girls were up here before boys even open their eyes three days a week. My girls were on this field when, you know, the sun wasn’t even out three days a week and not saying the boys don’t work as hard, but my girls work just as hard as the boys on this campus,” Moore said.
So that number next to their name means more than just how talented they are on the field.
“Obviously male sports get a lot more attention than female athletes and I think we’ve earned our spot,” Hockman said.
It’s representation and a foundation for the future.
“I want this to be a reflection of how y’all have never seen yourself when it comes to how good you truly are, how hard you have worked. The ranking is speaking for itself at this point,” Moore said.