By TENAJH SWEETING

Tribune Sports Reporter

tsweeting@tribunemedia.net

The new year is set to be a promising one for the Bahamas Youth Flag Football League (BYFFL) with lots of development initiatives on the horizon. After making great strides in 2023 including youth football clinics, an inaugural high school tournament along with international play at the USA Flag Football World Championship in December, the youth league is expecting to take things a step further in 2024.

Jayson Clarke, programme director of the BYFFL, said they have wasted no time in starting their development exercises beginning with an offensive camp which got underway this month.

“We have started the year off already with a free offensive camp during the month of January. We are gonna hit the ground running this year. Although we just returned from Texas last week there are a lot of things we have planned. We have a full year of activities and this is actually the fullest calendar we have ever had. To increase our development and level of play we already have two camps scheduled,” Clarke said

Among some of the events expected to be on the 2024 BYFFL calendar will be the second edition of the high school flag football tournament. The event, which was introduced last year, saw St Augustine’s College High School take home the trophy for the under-14 division. Meanwhile, Kingsway Academy hoisted the first championship trophy for the inaugural tourney in the 14 and over division.

“We did introduce the first high school tournament and that is also on our calendar for this year in April. We have already reached out to all of the schools that participated last year and we have an additional two schools who have already said they want to participate. We are working on some promotional material to invite some other schools,” the programme director said.

In the latter part of 2023, the BYFFL partnered with the Barracudas Flag Football Club in Harbour Island to host a youth clinic. However, in 2024, Clarke is expecting to expand their presence throughout the Family Islands starting with Eleuthera and Freeport with the long term goal of having nationals for the sporting discipline.

“We started to work with Eleuthera and there is a team in Harbour Island right now working and we are partnering with them so they intend to be a part of the high school tournament. We have also reached out to Freeport as well as it relates to youth flag. We are looking to expand youth flag being played across more and more islands,” he said.

Additional plans for the year will include the implementation of a spring and fall season due to high demand to allow the young athletes to play more and aid in their development.

The 2024 BYFFL schedule of events is slated to be released in upcoming weeks.