Steve Young, John Paye lead first-year Menlo girls flag football team to 15-1 season

After humbling 0-1 start, the Knights win 15 straight spotlighted by two former NFL quarterbacks

Author:
Mitch Stephens, SBLive Sports
Updated:
Nov 9, 2023 2:30 PM EST
Original:
Nov 8, 2023

Never has a group of nearly 30 teenage girls been so set up to succeed. Or fail.

All eyes were focused on the 2023 girls flag football team at Menlo School in Atherton, a first-year program playing California's — if not the country's — hottest new sport.

The California Interscholastic Federation sanctioned flag football in February — by a 146-0 vote — joining seven other states: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada and New York. According to the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS), the number of girls playing flag football in high school in the U.S. doubled to 11,000 between 2008 and 2019.

That number jumped to nearly 16,000 in 2022.

But what all those girls from all those states didn't have were two former NFL quarterbacks — one a Hall of Famer — coaching them.

Steve Young joined his pal and head coach John Paye, a former 49er teammate, Stanford grad and Menlo School legend, to form a football and fatherly braintrust like no other.

Menlo School flag football coaches Steve Young (left) and John Paye during a recent game with Skyline of Oakland
Photo: Jim Malone

Young had two daughters on the team — senior Summer and freshman Laila — and Paye had previously coached his daughters and sister in the Menlo basketball program, winning four state championships along the way.

Add in assistant athletic director Buffie Ward Williams and baseball coach David Trujillo, and this first-year squad had a wealth of knowledge, support and perspective that would be hard to match.

Along with it, however, so carried all those eyeballs, all that attention and systemic pressures magnified inside a teen's body playing a game they were just learning.

Local and national media jumped on the story, bringing large television and photo lenses to virtually every practice and game.

Although most who attend the high-achieving private school of nearly 600 high school-aged students are accustomed to the forces of success — Cal-Hi Sports named Menlo its 2021-22 California Small School of the Year and more than 100 alumni currently play sports in either internationally, professionally or at the collegiate ranks — the spotlight was largely searing on these Knights.

So, when they fizzled with a season-opening 2-0 defeat to arch-rival Sacred Heart Prep — yes the game was decided by a safety — the Menlo 30, and the coaching staff had some work to do.

As Young said in this piece by Dan Pompei of The Athletic: "“I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a more forlorn group of people,” after the loss.

Pulling flags, perspective

Speedy sophomore Krista Arreola avoids a defender.
Photo: Jim Malone

Between Paye, who went 28 years between state titles, and Young, originally not an entirely popular Bay Area figure while nipping on the heels and ultimately replacing Joe Montana, the coaches had endless perspective on the topic of humility and defeat.

They immediately helped straighten the ship.

The Knights won their next game 38-14 over The King's Academy, then 41-20 over Notre Dame St. Joseph followed by 34-0 over Skyline of Oakland (see photos).

They finished their season last week on a 15-game win streak to complete a 15-1 campaign. Poetically, the team they opened with a loss, they defeated 25-0. All told during the streak they outscored foes 412-89.

Besides getting off the line, running routes and hitting receivers, they apparently learned quickly how to pull flags, while recording seven shutouts.

The winning and score differential was of secondary note to the players and coaches. The bigger picture all season, according to Paye and Young, was having the chance to play the game.

"I think back and I always got to play football," Young said. "I have never been in that position that (women) were, where they were being excluded.

"We shouldn't underestimate the significance of the girls being able to play football. I was shocked the first time I came out to practice, the girls were so excited to be there as if they could feel they were on the verge of (history). They were excited in a fundamental way in the sense that ‘I'm part of something that I've always watched, and now I can be a part of, I can play.

“This is America’s game, and they’re playing it. This is what it feels like and looks like. And it feels like we should have been doing this for 30 years..’”

The drive, 'The Genius '

Freshman quarterback Ava Allen told Fox News: "It's really insightful hearing it from them because they know what we're going through."
Photo: Jim Malone

Said Paye: "I run into a lot of Menlo alumni — ones who I went to school with in the ’80s, and they would say, 'Oh John, I would be great at that, and I wish I could have played.' so to see this all come to fruition is pretty neat.

"I know my sisters would have loved to have gotten the opportunity to play. My nieces — Kate (Stanford women's basketball associate head coach) has two young daughters who play flag football. I got to coach with Buffie (Ward Williams) which was a treat and I know she was a great athlete here and would have done really well had she gotten to play."

The coaching staff implemented much of the concepts they learned from Hall of Fame coach, the late Bill Walsh, aka: The Genius.

"Coach Walsh always stressed beating your opponent to the punch, and coming off the line fast," Paye said. "So much was predicated on the team getting in the right cadence. In flag with no blocking, there's less stress on the minutiae, it's more free-flowing."

Free-flowing, yet intense, yet not cut throat.

"The girls are very competitive," Paye said. "They want to win and do well collectively. They all want to like each other it seems. Us guys we don't have to like each other — we still want to win, but we don't necessarily like the guy next to us. The girls seem very driven as a group."

Young called the experience of coaching "fascinating."

Raw and organic

Steve Young explaining concepts at halftime in a recent game against Skyline of Oakland.
Photo: Jim Malone

"It takes me back to when I first started playing, and going back to the very beginning and teaching the girls how to throw a football," he said. "It's just going back to where I started and what I Iove so much about football — it's just raw and organic.

"For me, it's full circle. I remember having a Roger Staubach poster on my wall, and studying how he held the football. Now, I'm getting to do that, and teaching someone who's never thrown a football before."

It was Young's first football coaching experience. He actually helped Paye coach girls basketball in 1987, the same year the two met. Paye was just drafted and Young had signed a free-agent contract and arrived at camp at the same time.

When the NFL went on strike, Paye started coaching his freshman sister Kate at Menlo. He asked Young to join him, just as he did for flag football. Young, whose two older sons, didn't play football, has gushed to reporters over the experience to coach his daughters.

"A coach is like a parent, a priest, a policeman — the people in our society that we trust to do good with the power they have," he told Pompei. "A coach is a powerful position because so much human development can happen. It’s not just how you throw a ball or run a route that a coach can influence but who you will become as a person.”

Summer Young, a fleet wide receiver who also runs track, wore No. 8 in her father's honor.

She told Bailey O'Carroll of local Fox affiliate KTVU: "He is so supportive — the kindest human being ever — and I think that translates to the field. Usually kids don't want their parents on the field or coaching because they're tough, and he is tough on me, but he's encouraging and wants the best for us."