Jakarta Waves the Flag for Flag Football

Sixty high school boys stand in four lines for a warm-up session on a bright Saturday morning at the hockey field in Senayan. A man in a black jersey stands in the middle of the field, coaching and yelling orders at the group. His body is almost fully covered with a hat, sunglasses, scarf and hand protection.

They jog, drill, do pushups and run for half an hour before being separated into three groups for specialized kinds of training. The largest group has to run and catch an oval-shaped ball. Another group has their members standing across from each other to practice their skills in throwing and catching the ball. The boys in the last group lean forward and touch their hands to the ground before they get up and push each other on the chest.

This is a practice session of the Indonesian Flag Football Association.

“Flag football is the light version of American football,” said Denny Yustiadi, who coaches the players.

Unlike American football, there is no tackling involved. Every player in the game is wearing a belt with four flags attached. Ball carriers are downed by pulling off one of the flags. Head and body protectors, which can be prohibitively expensive, are not required for this version of the game.

The offensive and defensive teams include a quarterback, receivers, running backs and linemen. According to Denny, good athletic skills such as running and ball catching help new players adjust to the game quickly.

“Here, you get a taste of American football, but we don’t play rough,” he added.

Members of the association range from Indonesians who attended university in the United States to Indonesian high school fans of Ace Shield, a Japanese manga cartoon about American football.

Denny, who is the quarterback, said the association started playing again in February, after six years off the field due to a shortage of players. But at the moment, the association is desperate for more senior members who can help with coaching. Last week they had hundreds of high school students at the training session.

“That was crazy. The popularity of American football is rising, thanks to NSL [a British football league] and Ace Shield,” Denny said.

Fadhil, Ihsan and Ezra are three Al-Azhar students who come to practice regularly.

Fadhil is a fan of NSL and American football. He enjoys practice because everybody gets to play.

“At soccer practice they usually only let the best players play,” Ezra said. “That doesn’t happen here.”

“I found out about this group on an Internet forum,” Ihsan said. “I read that this group played a kind of American football so I decided to come along.”

Ihsan said the people he met on the field were friendly, which keeps him coming back to practice.

Every player has to attend training sessions for a month and play for a season, which lasts for three or four months, before he can be accepted onto a team. So far, the association has six teams.

While the high school boys are practicing, a few older men prepare for their turn while watching from the sidelines. The sun is heating up as they exchange sandals for sneakers, apply sun lotion and put on their jerseys. Most of them use a mix of Indonesian and English to talk to each other.

The scrimmage starts at 10 a.m. This is when the young players step off the field and senior members put on the flag belts to play. They change players casually during the scrimmage, giving everyone who comes the chance to get on the field.

“In a formal game, the discussion is only for 30 seconds, but here, it takes longer because we only play casually,” said Chris Sebastian, who used to play American football when he studied in the United States.

“Most of us used to play American football when we studied in the US, that’s how we know and understand about the game,” said Charles Ham, who recently joined the practice.

For Charles, flag football is a better fitness option than going to the gym.

“The gym is boring, you have to wait to use the equipment, and it’s all about enlarging your muscles,” he said.

“I was so tempted to tackle someone,” Norman, one of the players, said to Charles. The two reminisce about when they played in the United States. Charles said he enjoyed snow football even more.

“It’s the tackling and the falling that make the game interesting,” Charles said. “That’s what you call a real ‘man’s sport.’ ”

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