The Bethel University football team lines up on defense facing Gustavus Adolphus College. It’s a brisk and sunny Saturday afternoon—the first game of the season. The players have waited months for this moment.
The Gustavus quarterback drops back to pass and fires towards the middle. A Bethel cornerback steps in front of the pass and grabs it in stride, running untouched to the end zone for six points.
But the cornerback isn’t wearing pads, nor are her teammates or her opponents. In fact, it’s not even fall.
Freshman Cada Scott instead dons a white belt with two yellow flags fluttering in the early-April wind, smiling widely as she scores the touchdown and celebrates with her teammates.
With help from a $144,000 donation by the Minnesota Vikings and the National Football League (NFL), Bethel and six other universities from around the region are competing in the first season of collegiate women’s flag football.
Although it’s technically a student-run club sport, Bethel Athletics supervised the start of this unique opportunity. The Vikings approached Bethel athletic director Greg Peterson mid-fall to begin the process of initiating the league.
“I think there is momentum to continue to build [flag football],” Peterson said. “The NFL and their teams are behind it, and that helps in significant ways.”
As the calendar flipped to 2025, Zoom meetings with other athletic directors and Vikings personnel turned into recruitment by Bethel Student Government (BSG) to gauge interest. Clubs, organizations and intramural committee members set up shop in Bethel’s Brushaber Commons to hand out fliers.
That’s where both Scott and freshman wide receiver Alaina Bonacquista first learned of the opportunity—an opportunity neither of them had realized they wanted.
“We’ve never really gotten to experience playing [football],” Scott said. “There hasn’t been a way to do it where girls would like it.”
The 2025 season consists of two “jamborees” April 5 and April 12. Each team plays three games per jamboree, enough to play each team once. Then, the records in those games will seed the teams for a championship tournament April 26 at the Twin Cities Orthopedics Performance Center stadium, home of the Vikings.
For almost all of the players, it’s the first time they’ve experienced playing football in an organized setting. Scott is the only exception. She played a club/intramural mix of flag football at her former university—California Baptist University—before transferring to Bethel in the spring.
For the rest, high school powderpuff and watching varsity games was their only football background, if that.
After a late-February meeting for anyone interested, excitement about the sport continued to grow. However, Bonacquista still didn’t realize how serious it was. She assumed it would be a slightly more organized powder-puff league—solely fun and “laxed.”
But head coach Tavian Swanson, who daylights as the defensive backs coach for the Royals’ tackle team, wanted to instill a sense of seriousness and competition from the start of the first practice March 20.
“Powder-puff is kind of crazy and chaotic,” Swanson said. “But this [league] … there’s strategy to it, there’s techniques, there’s fundamentals.”
That strategy includes new rules and stipulations that differ from tackle football. The field is just 50 yards long and half as wide as a regular football field. There are no kickoffs; teams start possessions with the ball at their own 5-yard line. The offense then gets four downs to cross midfield. On fourth down, the team can either go for it or verbally punt, giving the other team the ball at its own five.
Referees count to five out loud when the ball is snapped and the quarterback must either throw the ball or take the ball herself. Defenders cannot rush the quarterback unless the rushers come from seven yards off the line of scrimmage.
Because of the players’ collective lack of football experience, Swanson had to break down the game to its most basic. When he used terms like line of scrimmage and zone coverage during the first practice, he was met with blank stares.
“Some of this stuff is completely foreign to them,” Swanson said. “Language is foreign. Movements are foreign.”
Kiersten Hansen, a 2010 Bethel graduate who played three years of professional football for the Minnesota Vixen in the Independent Women’s Football League, helps out as well. Hansen more recently coached defensive backs for Eden Prairie High School’s varsity tackle team. Since Swanson and Roste have commitments to coach the men’s tackle team in the spring, Hansen runs practice when the other two are gone.
“She’s an awesome asset to have on the team as a coach,” Swanson said. “Just because she knows it.”
Now, football is more familiar to the team. Defensive players know the difference between a blitz and a sack. Bonacquista said her favorite route is between the hitch-and-go or fade.
As Scott lines up against Bonacquista in practice, Swanson makes his calls from the sidelines. He disguises zones and blitzes behind numbers and peculiar words like papaya, chinchilla and chartreuse.
Swanson also makes sure practice is competitive. On the final play of an Oklahoma drill, where one player runs with the ball while a defender attempts to stop her before reaching the end zone, Swanson announces the losing side will do push-ups. Scott rips off the flag for the stop, and the entire defense erupts while the offense drops to the turf.
Still, most importantly to them, the coaches ensure the game is fun.
Despite a 3-0 start to the season during the season-opening jamboree at the University of Northwestern April 5, Hansen insisted the team could improve, particularly in the celebration department. Now the team dedicates the last 15 minutes of each practice to work on its “cellys.”
Before practice, as players line up across from each other to play catch, practicing one-handed grabs and punts, light-hearted chatter and giggles echo across Royal Stadium where the track and women’s soccer teams simultaneously practice. Players show off their newest bruises from their most recent fall on the turf.
During practice, Bonacquista jokes with a teammate on the sideline that Swanson’s “blue 33” call sounds like a food dye, eliciting more laughs and smiles.
After practice, once the team has broken down, more chuckles ensue as players discuss plans for how they’ll celebrate their touchdowns.
“The girls were hooting and hollering and having a blast,” Swanson said. “That outweighs any wins any day for any sport.”
It’s this fun community that both Scott and Bonacquista attribute to the team’s early success at Northwestern. Players consistently cheer each other on. Every score results in jumping shoulder bumps, high fives and dancing.
“There’s a buzz around it,” Scott said. “It felt like that on Saturday [April 5], for sure.”
As important as community and laughter is to Swanson, he made it clear he didn’t want winning thrown to the side.
“We want to win,” Swanson said to the team. “Winning’s fun.”
Each player knows her positivity contributes to the team’s success. Still, the on-field performance only improves. Players, like Scott, ask questions constantly, trying to learn more about this new sport in an effort to win.
“It’s just fun to learn something new in sports,” Scott said.
Each player is coachable, typically taking corrections from coaches and applying those corrections immediately in the next drill.
The offense burns its lungs screaming while the defense is on the field and vice versa. Even in practice defenders celebrate a long run they just gave up. The offense gives kudos when a defender makes a stop.
Bonacquista’s athletic background gives her experience cheering on teammates. She plays on the varsity women’s basketball team, which proclaims itself as the funniest team in the conference in the way they support each other.
“We have encouraged each other so well and supported each other in this new thing,” Bonacquista said. “I think we’re all each other’s biggest fans.”
Her athleticism helped her score three touchdowns at Northwestern, hauling in several deep passes while most teams struggled to catch the ball on the windy Saturday. She plays hard in practice, knowing each rep is an opportunity for her teammates to get better–another lesson learned on the hardwood.
Scott also pulls from her experiences in athletics. She played soccer and basketball in high school and always wanted to win. Her background in football comes from growing up with older brothers who played.
When she first heard about the league, she hesitated to join because she didn’t know many people playing. Then other friends convinced her to join, but she needed one condition for it to be worth her time.
“I knew it was going to be competitive,” Scott said. “So I was just like, ‘I might as well give it a go. What’s the worst that can happen?’”
Scott claims to be one of the most competitive players on the team. She internally predicted she’d be placed on defense at the start of the season. It’s satisfying to her when she figures out the offense’s scheme, and she did so several times in all three games at Northwestern. Three interceptions–two of them which she returned for touchdowns–speak for themselves.
One of the picks came accidentally. Scott’s tendencies are more like a safety than that of her given cornerback position. She prefers taking risks and jumping plays by leaving her zone to playing where she’s assigned, which happened as she intercepted a Concordia College pass in stride, as if intended for her, and turned it into six points.
Even after Scott broke her finger three days after the Northwestern jamboree, her rapacious determination to win showed as she played through the injury for three more games at the University of Wisconsin-Stout April 12.
She’s also using the opportunity to learn more about sports.There’s only so much to know about soccer and basketball, so football’s novelty is exciting to her.
“Sports make such a big impact on people’s lives,” Scott said. “It’s all about community, and it teaches you things.”
Ultimately, it’s a chance for every player to be part of a new community, whether they come from an athletic background or not.
“For some of the girls, this is their first time to put on a jersey, to be on an athletic team that’s actually competing,” Swanson said.
The opportunity is historic. This league is the first of its kind in the region, which consists of Minnesota, South Dakota and Wisconsin. As Bethel, the Vikings and even the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) attempt to sanction women’s flag football as a varsity sport, it will be this club league which stands out as the catalyst.
“We get the opportunity to make history,” Bonacquista said. “ I think that alone is special.”
After a 1-2 performance at the Stout jamboree, a performance the team of competitors was far from happy about, Bethel faced Gustavus again in its first game of the championship tournament April 26. After a win in game one, the third-seeded Royals lost their next two games in the double-elimination tournament – the last one to eventual runner-up Augustana University. Every player wanted to win a championship in this inaugural season, but Scott and Bonacquista believe the season was still a success, regardless.
They hope to continue the league for the rest of their time at Bethel and beyond, collecting broken fingers, perfecting their “cellys” and ultimately setting the stage for future flag football players.
