AUSTIN, Texas — Across the sport of football, there are plenty of father son duos, and Keenan and Kaden Hughes are no different.
It’s just their roster that is.
“Once I actually dove into coaching girls, I absolutely fell in love with it,” Keenan Hughes said. “I wouldn’t dare go back to coaching boys after coaching girls.”
Keenan Hughes is the head coach of the women’s flag football team at Concordia University, the first of its kind in Texas.
The women’s flag football program is set to launch this spring, and will be the first women’s collegiate flag football program in the state. And with its launch will come a whole new generation of football family duos.
Chrisma and Doxa Maulolo are one of the new emerging duos, and they’re more than just teammates – they are twins, and probably the most in-synch quarterback and center duo to ever take the field.
“When we’re with each other we just know,” Chrisma Maulolo said. “It snaps on our mind, I’m like ‘I can catch Doxa’s ball she knows where I’m going to go.'”
“I know when she snaps it, she’s gunna run there and she’s gunna protect and she’s gonna do her job,” Doxa Maulolo said.
They also know where they’ve been, and the hardships that football has helped them overcome.
“A lot of times, my mental health is not the strongest,” Doxa Maulolo said. “Football has given me a second chance because I wanted to give up on Concordia. Flag football has literally given me motivation and the confidence and the passion to even continue here.”
“Now, she has no plans of doing that because she has found that sense of family and that sense of inclusion within her teammates here,” Keenan Hughes said.
If you ask them, football was not part of the plan, but now they are here to stay, with hopes that they show other girls that they belong on the gridiron too.
“I really, really hope that they see us and just take inspiration to say, I can do that too,'” Doxa Maulolo said. “We might be the first flag football team in Texas, but there are so many opportunities coming.”