ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Albuquerque Academy recent graduate Emanee Cerda has a full ride to North Carolina’s Mars Hill University to play flag football for their Division II women’s team.
She has been playing the sport the past four years for club teams in Albuquerque. And the landscape has changed a lot during Cerda’s time in high school, going from being the only girl on all-boys teams to starring on all-girls teams. The rise in the sport’s popularity among young women is parallel to Cerda’s personal growth in flag football.
“It feels good knowing you inspire someone,” Cerda said. “And now knowing that something that you’re doing is making another girl confident, and but also for me, it really it helps me inside because I know that I’m helping out somebody. And not only am I inspiring them, but they’re also inspiring me.”
Cerda said she has loved football her entire life. She’s a big Raiders fan, but she never had a chance play tackle football herself.
“I just don’t fit in like with the rest of the guys, like the guys playing football,” Cerda said. “And I think since I’d never got those opportunities to play like real football or tackle football, that I’m taking this seriously because, you know, there’s nothing else that I can really do.”
Nothing she could really do besides playing flag football. She started out by playing on her older brother’s team, which turned into playing for her dad on an all-girls team called Desert Reign.
After years of having fun in the local NFL flag league, against girls and boys, Cerda said she only started thinking about taking flag football to the college level during her senior year.
“I had never thought about it before,” Cerda said. “And it was (when) I went to a showcase out in Houston in February, and that was when I received i think, six offers. And then I eventually settled on Mars Hill in North Carolina.”
She came out of that showcase one of the hottest quarterback recruits in her class, then got a full ride to play QB and cornerback in college.
Cerda has paved the way for other girls to follow in her footsteps, which is in the back of her mind every time she takes the field
“And, you know, keep going,” Cerda said. “You know, stay motivated because there are people watching and there are like younger girls looking at me, you know, seeing me, putting me as the example.”
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