In August of last year, Cal Poly made NCAA history by becoming the first university on the West Coast to officially add a Division I women’s flag football team to their collection of Division I athletic programs.
Nearly seven months later, the first significant action taken for the program was made when newly-hired Director of Athletics, Carter Henderson, announced the hiring of Rod Sherman as the head coach for the Women’s Flag Football program.
Prior to arriving at Cal Poly, Sherman boasted 15 years of coaching experience throughout several tackle football programs across the nation. Most notably, Sherman served as the head coach of Valor Christian High School in Colorado, in which he was able to coach current NFL superstar, Christian McCaffrey.
Despite the experience, this will be Sherman’s first time in his career in which he will be the head of a women’s flag football program, though his approach to the sport and the game will remain the same.
“Part of what I’ll bring is ‘How do you prepare at an elite level?’” Sherman said. “How do NFL teams or major Division I teams on the boys’ side prepare? I think some programs dumb things down for the women’s flag game and I think that’s crazy because the women can do the same thing the guys can do.”
A significant portion of preparing the program for the upcoming spring season lies in establishing an identity and culture within the team.
Sherman is primarily focused on developing a positive team culture, with three main principles acting as the pillars for the program’s identity.
“Our core values are love, accountability and competition,” Sherman said. “We really desire that every athlete is in competition with themselves to become the best version of themselves but you can only do that by constantly competing. So culturally, that’s what we want to embed in our program; that you can love each other and that you’re going to be accountable but in everything you do, you’re going to compete.”
Love is always named first out of the three primary pillars, as Sherman wants to stress the importance of love within the program. When conducting his recruiting trips, Sherman hands out articles of successful athletes to the new recruits in order to further exemplify what culture he wants to build in San Luis Obispo.
“I gave out an article about Paige Bueckers, who was the number one draft pick in the WNBA for her class, and it talked about her UCONN teammates and the love that they had together,” Sherman said. “And I think the best way to help build your culture is to read successful examples and go ‘How does that come into play for us?’”
However, the other two principles behind Sherman’s culture remain equally as important.
More specifically, Sherman is continuing to put a larger emphasis on the trait of competitiveness and overall competition due to his belief in its significant role in self-improvement. The newly-hired head coach plans to drill competitiveness into his players by implementing the trait into each drill performed at practice.
“Being a competitor is a skill, and if it’s a skill, that means you can depend on it and you can improve on it,” Sherman said. “We really want to have competition in everything we do and we want to have winners and losers in drills because it’s got to matter and mean something to know ‘Here’s my goal. How am I doing? Am I winning this drill or not?’ because that will help us to grow each of our individual skills.”
With the off-season fast approaching, Cal Poly’s roster is nearly finalized.
One recent signee is Sydney Bertoni, who is the founder of the Cal Poly Flag Football Club. Bertoni had initially begun the club as a means of playing flag football at the collegiate level.
Now a part of the Division I program, Bertoni is looking to utilize her leadership experience to help guide the program in the right direction.
“I think because I started the club team and also started my high school team, it’s kind of put me in a point of leadership and has taught me a lot about kind of leading by example,” Bertoni said. “It’s taught me a lot about showing up for the younger players, and kind of also being a coach as well as a player.”
With Cal Poly host to both a club team and an officially-designated Division I program, Bertoni holds out hope that both programs will help to serve as inspirations for those looking to play flag football at a higher level.
“The ability to play at this elite college level is an amazing opportunity whether it’s Division I or club; it’s still an amazing accomplishment,” Bertoni said. “I hope that the Division I program and the club girls realize how many people are looking toward them as inspirations of how they want to live their lives or how they may see themselves in 10 years, at school, playing flag football.”
Despite the preparation for the inaugural season, which is officially set to begin in the spring of 2027, the timeline for postseason play is not as solid, with the first national championship expected to be played in 2028.
However there is still an intent to bring a Division I championship home to Cal Poly, though the overarching goal for the program is to serve as a connecting point for the current lives of athletes into their lives in the future.
“Our goal is to win the first Division I national championship for Cal Poly,” Sherman said. “But in the midst of that we want a program that is transformational for our student-athletes, so that our athletes can go on and be on Team USA or compete in the Olympics in LA in 2028 – we want Cal Poly to be a bridge for the rest of their lives.”