Coach Sees Potential and Makes Student Athlete an Assistant Coach

By: Stephanie Fonseca

For Boca Raton High School’s Flag Football team, it was rebuilding season and as Coach Al went to the drawing board, he saw potential in one player that could possibly coach also.

Sthephanie Abrantes was one of the three seniors on the Boca High’s fairly young flag football ball team. As a young girl, Abrantes grew up playing football  with her older brother and the more she played the more she fell in love with the sport. When she heard that Boca High had a flag football team, she started to go to their conditioning practices and tryouts.

Little did she know what this would blossom into.

As the season began, the Bobcat’s flag football coach, Coach Al, saw a player who was putting in work on the field and a light bulb went on. Seeing how invested and dedicated Abrantes was, he saw potential in her to possibly be a player and coach for the team. “Coach saw potential in me that I didn’t know was there, and as he started teaching me how to coach and call plays, it all went on from there,” said Abrantes. Abrantes admits that it was challenging but she affirmed that she was down for the challenge and  she excelled.

“She’s mature enough not only to take on a leadership role, but also showed that she was mature enough to coach girls who are a year or two younger than her.” observed Coach Al.

Coach Al took Abrantes under his wing and was not disappointed.

During the season Coach Al allowed Abrantes to coach three games all of which she won.  “She won against coaches who have been coaching for awhile, it wasn’t a situation where she was going against inferior teams that weren’t coached,” said Coach Al.

When asked how the experience was, Abrantes observed her wins and is confident that she’s doing especially being that the her wins accounted for three of the five wins they had this season.

Abrantes plans to stay local and attend FAU in the fall, making Coach Al optimistic that she’ll stick around for the following season and even help coach the JV team next year.