By Marshall Tempest
Reporter
The Apopka flag football team fell last week in the Regional Championship round of the 4A 2025 FHSAA Flag Football State Championship Tournament.
The Blue Darters lost 19-6 to the Spruce Creek Hawks, snapping a 10-game winning streak.
The game was slow and atypical of the Blue Darters’ usual offensive onslaught. The team only scored one touchdown and couldn’t convert the extra point.
Blue Darters head coach Tanisha Wilson said she believes the team just wasn’t themselves and was affected by the moment.
“I honestly think it was the nerves of the game and that big moment, this group of girls has never competed in championship games,” Wilson said.
Wilson said her team lacked energy in the loss. After going up 6-0, the Spruce Creek Hawks scored a touchdown of their own. It was a trick play that caught the Apopka secondary off guard and gave up a free receiver over the top for a long ball touchdown.
“Like in the first quarter, we were doing OK,” Wilson said. “We started out slow, but once the other team scored, I feel like our energy shifted. And it was like in that moment of, ‘Oh, wait a minute, we may lose the game,’ when we never recovered.”
The Hawks scored another touchdown to extend their lead to 13-6 before halftime. Wilson said that after that play, the girls were down and seemingly defeated, and they still had an entire half to go.
“I didn’t have anyone who was like, ‘Hey! We’re not down, we’re not losing,'” Wilson said. “We didn’t have that general who would flip the energy. We didn’t have that on that field that night. And when you don’t have at least one player that can get in there and rah, rah, and pick everybody up, they kind of stay flat.”
Wilson said a coach can only do so much to instill confidence in a player. After that, it’s up to the players and their teammates to be there for each other and hold each other accountable. Wilson said that she couldn’t even recognize her own team because they just seemed like they weren’t in the game mentally.
The Blue Darters’ offense just couldn’t get anything going for them. They dropped passes, ran the wrong routes, and Apopka’s quarterback, Jhenelle Francis, who has been performing at an elite level, just wasn’t her normal self in the run or pass game.
“[Francis’s] decision-making was kind of slow,” Wilson said. “She wouldn’t decide to run. It was like the principles of being disciplined weren’t there for us.”
Apopka gave up another touchdown before the game ended, falling 19-6. Even though their postseason run came to an end, the team has much to celebrate this season. They are regional runners-up, district champions and finished the season 15-2, ranked 22nd in the state and the nation.
Wilson told me that the loss was brutal for the team, especially her 14 seniors, but she reminded them to celebrate the season’s wins and accomplishments and not to focus on one loss.
“But I had to tell them, ‘This isn’t the outcome that we wanted,'” Wilson said. “And I know seniors, you’re sad, and you wanted to win regionals, but you have to celebrate the wins that you had along the way. You ended up being 15-2, and you were a district champ. You met your goal. Winning regionals would have been the icing on the cake. Still, you are regional runners-up, so we have to celebrate what you were able to accomplish.”
Wilson says the mentality now is just preparing for next season and bouncing back even better in 2026. With 14 seniors graduating, this team will have a lot of slots to fill, but Wilson said she has plenty of talent willing and able to step up.
Her message for her underclassmen was slightly different than that for the seniors after the loss.
“I hope you let this taste linger in your mouth and give you a drive for next season on where you want to go,” Wilson said. “Because the goal post has moved from winning districts, because you’ve accomplished that, to now winning regionals. You’ve now played in that game, and you know what it feels like.”
Wilson said the goal now is to make it to the final four by winning a regional championship. She is going about it the same way she tells her players to go about their goals, whether on the field or in life: Wilson says to her players: Take it one step at a time, one play at a time, one day at a time. It’s all about incremental steps to victory.
Wilson said the work for next season starts now. She has freshmen and sophomores who didn’t get many minutes but were very capable, and she is excited to see them next season. Between tournaments, off-season club, and AAU, she said her team will come back ready and with a fight in them to go all the way.
“So I’m feeling pretty strong about them coming back next season, and they’re all excited,” Wilson said. “A lot of them will be playing AAU in the off-season. We’ve been invited to a couple of tournaments, so I got to check in with their schedule to see how it aligns. But we’ll definitely be getting with them and playing some fall flag as well as some stuff over the summer.”
