New Season = New teams and more competition

Welcome back! I hope everyone enjoyed their time off and is ready for the new year and for a new season to begin. My name is Lory Ouellette, I will be in charge of the articles for Coed 1 AND 2. Coed 3 will be taken care of Zackary Albert’s-Gill so make sure you read that one also! A little back story for the ones who may not know me; I have been playing flag football for about 8 years now, from highschool all the way up to the cegep level and I have only been playing in FPF for 2 years now. That being said, lets hop on the Winter 2024 season and see what it brings us!

Coed 1

With only 8 teams in this division this season, most of them are returning teams and only a couple are new. A newly added team who a lot of people may know, a team who has come a long way. From the women’s division, making their way to the coed 2 division in which they have won the finals. They have now made their way to Coed 1, SubZero, which are under “Zerosub”. An all women’s team composed of great athletes are now competing in the highlest level of Coed, however they have added Patrick Jérome & Ahmed Boubacar on their team for this division, not making it a whole women’s team! That being said, we’ll see how their first time competing in the coed 1 division go. Will they have a bumpy season with highs and lows? Will they make it into the finals just liked coed 2? We’ll see how it goes along the way.

Zerosub 25 – 25 KMEZ

They played against Kiss My End Zone in the first week. KMEZ being a team that have been playing in coed 1 for a while now. They have changed their line-up adding great players such as Tam Vilaydeth, Shantel Chippy Brown and Isiah Allard, just a few names from their team. One word to describe this game…surprised. Knowing KMEZ and their line-up I was not expecting Zerosub to tie the game. This proves that in coed 1 we never know what can happen, every team deserves their place and games can unexpectedly be different then we imagined. That’s whats fun in coed 1, all teams are some what on the same level making that division really competitive and it’s not only 1 person that can make a difference but a whole team in general. You can never know exactly who will win.

Both QB’s had an average of 160 yards or so and 4 touchdown’s, this was really a tie game in all the senses as both teams have similar stats. I could use this game as an example of the new rule set in place. The overtime rule has been added as a way to try and break a tie game. If the points are tied at the end of the 5 plays, both teams will have 1 shot at converts and try to break the tie to win. However, both teams were unsuccessful making the game still end with a tie.

EZFUN 27 – 33 Party Mix

With the new rule of minimum 3 women on the field, we can clearly see that the game changes in coed. Teams are going to have to start relying more on their girls to make plays, which plays a big part. We can clearly see this happening in the EZFun vs Party Mix matchup. With 3 TD’s from Anne Frédérique, 1 TD from Catherine Piche on Party Mix and similarly for EZFun we have 2 TD’s from Frédérique Daoust and 1 TD from Alexa Demers-Pena.

We can see that the women are getting more targeted and getting more included in the game which is really fun to see. Not every team has taken advantage of their girls yet, so hopefully it will change in the upcoming weeks where we can see women getting as many yards/TD’s as the men!

Plenty of fish 32 – 33 Les Porcinets

Plenty of fish is back for a new season with the same roster, while Les Porcinets are a new team with a few names that you probably already saw in the league which are the Kristopher Verreault,  Gabriel-Charles Dabe Champagne, Mathilde Sybille and Béatrice Bouchard. Compared to other teams in the league in this game both teams did not rely on their women’s. We can see that the players with the most targets and td’s are men. This did not affect them as they both played incredibly well and only finished with a 1 point difference. This game came down to who was able to get the converts and Les Porcinets were able to clutch in 1 more convert during the game in order to win. Talking about converts, Les Porcinets are looking to be a good team for getting them with a successful ⅗ for their convert attempts. While Plenty of Fish were going for 2 points every time and only getting 1 successful convert for the whole game. Knowing that converts are very important in a close game, will Maude Lacasse go back to 1 point converts in order to successfully achieve them or will she keep on trying for 2?

Coed 2

Coed 2, a huge division composed of 20 teams. At least half of this division are new teams that we’ve never seen before for instance, Team Meow Moew coming from the cegep of Edouard-Montpetit; we got Loards of the field, which include great athletes like Amélie Durocher, Felix Gerin-Lajoie and Alexandra Falcon-Korb; and many more to discover!

IG Team 2 13 – 21 Rocket

Starting off with one of the first games of the winter season. IG Team in coed 1 has decided to build another similar team with a few change ups for coed 2 this season! Jerry Beauboeuf has been seen playing QB with a 12/18 completion however not so many yards nor touchdowns. We know in the original IG Team it is Jeanslee who is throwing, however since he is absent this week Jerry took that position. Question remains, is Jerry the official QB in coed 2 or will Jeanslee take over once he comes back? Since he does have a 79.6 QB rating and is eligible to throw in this division. They played against The Rocket, to which they currently have a star player, Nassim Ouadhi, which is doing great offensively AND defensively. He gained a total of 112 yards and 2 TD’s, as well as getting 2 interceptions on the other side of the ball. Their QB Thomas-Charles Paradis is also doing really well on both sides. He can throw the ball where it needs to be but also got a pick six on defense which helped them win this game even if it was done in the first half. 

Y&Y 18 – 42 KMCB

Starting the season off with a matchup from last season. Last season both teams played against each other in the semi-finals and the winner clutched a place directly in the finals. The game was tight the whole time and came down to the last play in overtime where Alexi Dubois sacked the QB. 

However, this season both teams have major change-ups in their roster. KMCB completely changed their roster with only keeping 4 originals however adding Brady Ohanessian as a QB who has been playing in the men’s division before. They also added Jerome Hovington who is an absolute game-changer, he can catch pretty much any ball thrown in his direction.

In this game Brady was reading the defence really well as he executed 3 runs for a total of 44 yards and 2 TD’s as well as distributing the ball well to his teammates. 

Y&Y changed their QB to Stephen Casey and a couple of players here and there. We have yet to see how he will do with this new team. As of right now, we know that he likes to throw to Maya Di Fazio, as he should since she is a good player on offense and especially on defense. Where she got the award for most outstanding female player of the season last season. She holds up to her title once again after one game where she got 68 yards, 1 TD, 4 tackles and 1 PD. Will she keep up to her name for the best female in Coed 2? 

Pig 6 34-6 You and I

Return of the Pig 6, with Chris Olsen throwing this time instead of Cesar Garcia-Diaz. We have yet to know why they decided to switch it up as Ceasar was a good QB. Maybe he wanted to catch more balls than throw them? The QB matchup is interesting as Emmanuelle Bronsard only threw 73 yards, 1 TD but got intercepted 5 times this game while in the women’s division she is doing exceptionally well. Obviously, the competition is different from women’s to coed and the game is played differently as well. It is not her first time playing in coed so hopefully, she knows how to adjust to it and make some good play-calling during the next games. However, starting off the season playing against Pig 6 is something. Playing against Thomas Chaussé is very dangerous as he knows how to read the offense and this is proven by the 3 interceptions he got during the game. He is as good offensively and defensively since he is their number 1 player on the team right now. 

Fantasy team of the week

Coed 1

QB – Kristopher Verreault (Les Procinets), 22/39 completions, 263 yards, 5 TD’s, 1 Interception

Receiver – Marvin Steinberg (Kiss My End Zone), 5 catches, 77 yards, 4 TD’s 

Defender – Florence Leonard (EZFUN) , 7 tackles, 1 Interception

Rusher – Jessica Bositampen (Zerosub), 2 sacks

Female – Anne-Frédérique Tardif (Party Mix), 8/9 catches, 37 yards, 3 TD’s, 3 sacks

Coed 2

QB – Chris Olson (Pig 6), 20/31 completions, 205 yards, 5 TD’s

Receiver – Thomas Chaussé (Pig 6), 6 catches, 84 yards, 3 TD’s

Defender – Alexis Gaumont (Flash), 3 tackles, 3 interceptions, 2 TD’s

Rusher – Manuel Boismenu (Team Rocket), 1 tackle, 6 sacks

Female – Maya Di Fazio (Y&Y), 5/5 catches, 68 yards, 1 TD, 4 tackles, 1 PD

Game predictions for week 2

Coed 1

Plenty of Fish vs EZFUN

Les Petits Phoques vs Party Mix

Coed 2 

Kamikaze vs Y&Y

Pig 6 vs Who’s Gonna Carry The Boats

Balls Deep vs Balles Profondes

Power Puff Girls vs Team Rocket

If you didn’t know, Flag Plus has a podcast that comes out every week, they talk about every divisions, news from the league and many other fun stuff. If ever you are curious you can click on the video underneath to check it out.

Calling The Audible – Winter 2024 Episode 1

Thank you for reading the article for week 1, hopefully you liked it! If ever you have any questions, or recommendations or you want me to talk about a specific team, you can contact me via email [email protected].

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