One would be hard-pressed to find someone as committed to flag football as Wissahickon Head Coach Mike Reimel. Not a Johnny-come-lately to the game, he found it early in his life and has never lost it.
"The coaching began when I was 19, but I was playing from 5 years old to high school," Reimel said. "Every winter, we would go once a week and play our games at the North Penn Valley Boys and Girls Club. My older brother, Matt, decided to make a travel team for the kids, so I just started hanging around him and following in his footsteps.
"We're a sports family. We grew up playing every sport: wrestling, football, baseball, and I loved tackle football growing up, but something about flag just clicked. I just fell in love with the sport – the fast pace, the skill, the fact that anyone can play is huge.
"The same with the lack of equipment needed. When they say anyone can play flag, you can cut a towel into strips, put them in your (waist)band, and have them hanging out and use as a flag. All you need is a football. It's a sport that anyone can play and everyone has access to. I just love the competitiveness of flag football. Everything about it is awesome."
After coaching the North Penn Flag Girls team to five NFL Flag National Tournament of Champions, when the Eagles Girls Flag Football League, presented by Gatorade, was launched in 2022, Reimel coached Lansdale Catholic High School to an 11-0 record and the first Pennsylvania High School Girls Flag Football Championship.
The following spring, he began the girls' team at Wissahickon High School.
"I was a classroom assistant at the middle school at Wissahickon while I was coaching at Lansdale Catholic, and after that year, the Eagles were obviously trying to expand the reach with the high schools," Reimel said. "I went to my A.D. and asked him to let Wissahickon join the club, and he basically said he's on board, but he needs me to do it.
"So I chose to leave a championship roster for the growth of the game. Flag football is my life. I care more about growing the game and giving girls more opportunities than winning another championship. I decided Lansdale Catholic was in good hands, so I was able to leave them and start the program at Wissahickon."
While Reimel clearly had experience with flag football as a player and as a coach, his players did not. They were being introduced to the sport for the first time, which he admits he initially overlooked.
"My first year coaching at Wissahickon, my quarterback had a safety and ran up to me and was like, 'Why are we giving them the ball now? Why'd they get two points?' I just overlooked the fact that they didn't know what a safety was. We were so busy teaching the X's and O's that we forgot something as simple as that," Reimel said.
"It really made me go back and change my style of coaching to now teach everything. So when it just clicks for the girls, it's just an awesome feeling because you really understand that they are understanding it. They get excited when they know something that is second nature to us because we grew up playing.
"We're going to get to the point where girls are going to start playing at 4 and 5 years old, and when they get to high school, you're not going to have to teach those basics anymore because it's just going to be second nature to them."
The Trojans recently wrapped up their season with a 10-6 record. And while winning games is, of course, their goal, it's not their only one.
"Achievement is not just about wins; it's about development, effort, and growth," Reimel said. "We track progress in skill development, teamwork, and attitude, and we celebrate those improvements consistently. Leadership is developed by giving players responsibility, encouraging communication, and creating opportunities for them to lead drills, support teammates, and represent the program in the community. We want our athletes to be leaders both on and off the field."
Reimel is proud of what his athletes are accomplishing, that they've gotten out there and are playing a game during their high school years that wasn't available to girls not too long ago.
"To give the girls the opportunity to play a sport that I love and is my life is awesome," he said. "And showing that the girls can play football is really important to me because there's a lot of haters and doubtful people out there that don't think the girls should be playing. I like to have the girls prove them wrong.
"We have one girl that's going to college for flag football. So just having her change her mindset of maybe not going to college or maybe playing a different sport or whatnot, and then fall in love with flag, and now she's going to play at the next level.
"That's why I'm coaching, just to get these girls the opportunity. Whether they want to go to college or not, football teaches life lessons. They're going to carry what they're learning in flag for the rest of their life."
Besides coaching at Wissahickon, Reimel runs tournaments and clinics nationwide as the Director of Flag Football for United Sports and Flag Football Life. He's also the Philadelphia Eagles Girls Flag Football High School Coach of the Week.
"It's a feeling of what I'm doing is actually impacting people and then helping," Reimel said. "I do not like the spotlight ever, so I try to hide from pictures and all that, but it does feel good internally.
"It feels good just knowing that what I'm doing, what I'm spending a lot of time on, and sacrificing family time and work time and whatnot to coach, it does mean a lot that it gets recognized."
