By Michael Preston
Seraina Kraeft will bring a unique perspective to the IFAF European Flag Football Championships when the quarterback leads Switzerland’s quest in Ireland.
Many of her peers have played other sports before excelling in the non-contact football discipline, typically soccer, track and field and basketball. But not many have stared down a bobsled run and then raced at breakneck speeds along a narrow, twisting, banked iced track in a gravity-powered sled. Seraina also played tackle football before choosing to play flag football, and she plays and coaches ice hockey.
“My father is a former bobsleigh racer, a brakeman, and he was an official at the EHC Chur ice hockey club,” she explains. “That’s how I came into contact with these sports as a little girl. I started watching football around 2009 when my brother started playing for the Calanda Broncos. I think because of my height of 183cm (six feet) I was interesting for all sports for the teams, so I was asked to join.”
Seraina’s sporting prowess saw her earn second place in the Swiss two-man bobsled championship and she became a player/coach having captained her ice hockey team for several seasons. Her determination to play tackle football should have brought similar success, but things didn’t quite work out that way and that discipline’s loss became flag football’s gain.
“We had a tackle ladies team a couple of years ago in Chur, but unfortunately, we were not able to compete in a league,” Seraina explains. “We were the only Swiss team and somehow, we couldn’t join the German or Austrian leagues and because of that we lost a lot of the players. So, we had to make the decision in, I think it was in 2019, to play flag football or nothing.”
Even then, the talented athlete was almost lost to the sport.
“In the beginning I was not so motivated to play flag,” she laughed. “I was missing the quarterback runs, and the advantage of my body height and weight was gone. But after couple of practices, I changed my mind quickly.
“In flag there is a lot more passing, so I had to improve my throwing skills very quickly. You learn the same skills, but it doesn’t “hurt” because as a quarterback, you can take time to read the play and the worst thing that can happen is, that someone pulls your flag.
“Now I tell people to try this sport because it’s so much fun. It’s a perfect mix of running, catching, defending and so forth. And age doesn’t matter in this sport.”
Being a quarterback, a captain, and a coach, Seraina possesses qualities such a veteran multi-sport athlete is expected to bring to a national team.
“I know what it means to be a leader in a team,” she says. “It doesn’t matter what kind of sport you do or at which level you play, it will help you in different situations in other sports. As a player I am one hundred percent focused on my job on the field. As coach I am responsible for all the kids on the team. I understand both sides, so I think this could be an advantage.”
In Limerick, Switzerland will face five opponents in the group stages, including reigning champions Spain, and Austria, who finished fourth at The World Games, and were the top-placed European team at the 2021 World Championships. Finland, Germany, and hosts Ireland complete the lineup. Seraina shies away from predicting how her nation might fare against those rivals.
“The only thing I can predict is my effort and my attitude so that I will be able to say after the tournament, that my effort was one hundred percent on every single play,” she says. “We have a good mix of different types of players who bring a healthy self-confidence to the team.”
