By Michael Preston

Almost twelve months ago, Isabella Geraci took a step into the relative unknown. A year later, she is a world champion and is looking to capture The World Games and IFAF Americas continental gold medals.

Isabella spoke to IFAF last February from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte where USA Football was holding annual tryouts for an already formidable women’s flag football national team that was looking to enhance its roster. First, she made the cut from 60 hopefuls to a squad of 18 and was then selected for the 12-strong group that headed to Finland and ultimately won the 2024 IFAF Flag Football World Championships.

“It’s been like a whirlwind,” said Isabella when taking a break from conducting media interviews on Radio Row during the week building up to Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans. “Everything has happened so fast and we’re at events like this and I have to take a step back and appreciate that this is really amazing, and I feel honored to be able to do anything like this.

“I grew up playing football and so to be able to say I’m here as part of the Super Bowl and we have the Olympics coming up with the goal being to represent my country on that level, it’s just amazing.”

Back at the beginning of this journey, for Isabella - a successful college basketball player who first played flag football when she was seven years old - attempting to make the US squad was a daunting prospect. After all, they had won two straight IFAF world championships and were in no mood to relinquish their crown.

“I was almost starstruck meeting them,” admits Isabella. “I remember seeing Vanita (Krouch, the USA quarterback) off in the distance and I was thinking ‘oh my gosh I see pictures of her, I know who she is, this is so crazy. I’m about to play with her play against her and play in front of her’.”

Now Isabella is an established member of a close-knit core of US women’s players, who beat allcomers in Lahti last summer to retain that coveted world crown. Sweden, Australia, France and Ireland were dispatched in the group stages before knockout wins over Finland, Spain and Austria led to another title clash with Mexico and a 31-18 gold medal victory.

“As teammates we never really saw each other outside of training camps, so to be able to spend that many days together in Finland and then obviously win gold was great,” she recalled. “It just felt like a really true family environment and then outside of that, hearing stories about how other countries are trying to grow flag was amazing, to know that the game is growing around the world.”

With success comes expectation and arguably more so for the United States than any other nation. They will be the team to beat when defending the Americas continental championships and hope to wrestle the World Games trophy away from 2022 winners Mexico, when the United States suffered a rare defeat to their rivals.

On a personal level, just as she took a place on the roster from an incumbent last year, a new hopeful will be challenging her when annual tryouts next come around.

“There are people coming after your spot and you’ve got to remind yourself that you’re here for a reason on this team,” she explained. “I try not to think about it because it just puts pressure on myself. It’s just a game at the end of the day and I love playing it and that’s how it is.

“Every nation is getting better so whoever lines up across us, that’s our enemy at the time and we don’t really have anybody specific we want to beat, it’s just when we’re on the field we’re out for whoever is trying to take our title from us.”

Photo: USA Football / Lester Barnes