With the effects of COVID-19 still plaguing our community this past fall and winter, many of the organized sports programs that typically take place during the fall and winter months were not able to run this year. This situation created a major shortage of healthy outlets for kids at a time when they needed them most. As such, parents reached out to me to see if I would be willing to organize something fun for their sons in a COVID-safe manner. It was at this time when RFL, (Rabbi) Rose’s Flag Football League was born. RFL adhered strictly to the schools’ cohort model while also providing the boys with some flag football fun every Sunday morning.

Debra Popowitz, whose son Eitan participated in the inaugural season of RFL shared the following: “We are so grateful to Rabbi Rosalimsky for running RFL this season. There have been no extra curricular activities over the past 12 months and this has been very difficult for the boys. RFL gave them the opportunity to participate in organized sports, while remaining outdoors and with their pod. This was exactly what they needed to help them survive these winter months!”

Throughout this season, RFL has been running four simultaneous cohorts. The Yeshivat Noam and RYNJ sixth grade cohorts just completed their respective seasons (congratulations to the two championship teams) and the Yavneh fifth grade and Yeshivat Noam seventh grade cohorts are currently in the middle of their seasons.

We would like to thank TABC students Max Borger, Shay Fields, Dovid Gopin, Ari Herman, Jared Kinches, Chaim Mermelstein, Ophir Rauzman and Binyamin Wenger for their hard work coaching the boys in a fun, competitive and exciting way. We would also like to extend our appreciation to TABC students Netanel Eckman, Zachary Gibber, Yis Kaminetsky, Yonah Luber, Eli Saks, Shua Schloss, Natan Solomon, Shmuel Yablok and Joey Zelig for reffing the flag football games, a truly thankless job. Lastly, we would like to thank TABC junior Elisha Markovitz for his hard work staffing the games, setting up the fields and organizing the standings and schedules for all of the games. It is our fervent hope that by this time next year, we will be able to mix cohorts and allow boys from different schools to play with and against each other.

By Rabbi Avi Rosalimsky