The Steelers season is still months away, but football was in the spotlight in Pittsburgh on Sunday.
The Steelers Girls Flag Football season came to an exciting finish with its Girls Flag Football Championships held at Carnegie Mellon University.
In all, 15 teams competed in the day-long event, making for a successful completion of a third season of the girls flag football league.
The league crowned its 2024 champions, as Moon Area defeated North Allegheny in the finals, 32-6.
"Today was a great day," said Moon Area Head Coach Jason Russell. "We had a long season. The girls put in a lot of work. For them to go back-to-back, it was a great accomplishment. We have a lot of great players on our team who took that task, wore that crown with pride. And I always think when you have a Serayah Leech on your team, you always have a chance."
"It's never easy. It was a great season from all the girls," said Serayah Leech, a senior at Moon and team captain. "We lost a lot of seniors last year, so we knew it was going to be a rough season. All these girls locked in, preseaosn, during the season, playoffs, every single game they worked their butts off. All the mistakes we did in the regular season we knew not to make them in the playoffs because we knew that was going to come back and bite us in the butt. We did our thing, so I'm really proud."
Steelers alumni Troy Polamalu and Will Allen were on hand for the finals, with Polamalu presenting the trophy to the winners.
"We had a great time here today at Carnegie Mellon with our girls flag football teams, as well as all of those in attendance cheering them on," said Dan Rooney, the Steelers Director of Business Development. "Girls flag football has seen tremendous growth not only locally but also nationally over the past few years and days like today will only further that. Congratulations to our champion Moon Area Tigers and to all who competed throughout the 2024 season."
This past season the Steelers Girls Flag Football league grew to include 36 teams, up from 22 from 2023. The teams competed each Sunday over a six week season.
This past week, the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association (PIAA) held a first reading and voted unanimously to make girls flag football a sanctioned sport in the state of Pennsylvania. A second of three readings is set to be held by the PIAA later this summer.
