UTEP alum Sam Singleton to lead Howard Payne's new flag football team

Girls and women's flag football is early in what appears to be a huge boom, and now UTEP alum Sam Singleton is riding the first wave. Singleton, a cornerback on the 2000 WAC championship team who got his UTEP degree a year later, has been tasked with starting up the inaugural women's flag football team at Howard Payne University in Brownwood, Texas. More: Americas tops Harmony to win title on celebration day for girls flag football in El Paso The Yellow Jackets will compete for an official championship in the American Southwest Conference in 2026, one of 13 collegiate conferences nationwide that sponsors the sport.

To that end, Singleton has begun the work of creating a program that will debut in the spring. Sam Singelton to build flag football program at Howard Payne "There's nobody that has a blueprint," Singleton said. "So if I land one of these (jobs), I'm going to be a pioneer in this thing, I'm going to be right at the forefront to build a program with the support of our AD.

"It's humbling to know I'm being part of history. I'm paving the way not just for my (9-year-old) daughter but other young ladies joining the sport. " More: Harmony flag football team headed to Dallas Cowboys game to be honored for title The 48-year-old Singleton, who also ran track at UTEP, has an extensive coaching background and began to get familiar with the flag football version of the game in 2019 in his hometown of San Angelo when he was a director for the Boys and Girls Club.

He moved to Midland the next year and since then he has coached arena football professionally, was the head coach at Texas Leadership Charter Academy and held several different coaching positions in Ector County ISD, including a stint as secondary coach for Odessa Permian. Through all that he never lost his passion for flag football and kept doing that on the side, coaching his daughter in the Permian Basin Youth Football League. The longer he did that, while watching the sport grow at the high school and college levels, he decided to pursue that career path.