After weeks of deliberation, Watsonville senior Brianna Leon officially decided Tuesday evening on where she would like to continue her flag football career.
The Wildcatz’s standout two-sport athlete signed her National Letter of Intent to play on the inaugural women’s flag football team at La Sierra University in the 2025 fall season.
“There were a lot of different emotions overall, just very happy to have this opportunity to keep playing the sport I love,” said Leon, who was surrounded by dozens of family members, friends and former coaches. “It was a bittersweet moment but overall really, really happy.”
Leon made some history by becoming the first Watsonville student-athlete to receive an academic scholarship for flag football.
La Sierra—a member of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics—is assisting Leon with tuition and boarding thanks to her 4.0 grade point average.
“I’ve always wanted to do the best I could in the classroom and just have something to show for all my hard work,” she said.
Leon’s goal is to obtain a degree in sports management with hopes of becoming a sports agent.
Watsonville flag football head coach Zach Cook said as awesome as this opportunity is for Leon, he was fielding a lot of inquiries from NCAA Division II schools in the East Coast and Midwest in regards to her skills on the gridiron.
“I know the talent that she has is going to translate really well at that next level,” Cook said. “I am beyond extremely proud of her, happy for her. This moment is what it is, it’s ‘her-story.’ Which is history for us.”
Leon added she wants other student-athletes, more notably the underclassmen, to take notice that this isn’t just to continue her athletic career, but it’s an opportunity to further her education.
“It’s just another thing you could do to have fun in college, and just play sports, overall,” she said.
Cook said the biggest thing for Leon is being that beacon of hope for a community that tends to not see athletic scholarships as a lot of options for them.
“They just don’t have the opportunity to see people doing it,” Cook said. “Being that we had people in the community here to see her sign this deal, it was big. Not just for her, but for the community and the school.”
Cook, who was also Leon’s head coach on the girls’ basketball varsity team for the past four seasons, mentioned flag football is rapidly growing in California. Especially with the introduction of the sport into the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
“It helps continue this path that we’re on,” Cook said. “I’ve already had people requesting and asking about next season.”
Leon helped the ‘Catz flag football team reach the Pacific Coast Athletic League Championship in 2024. She caught the game-winning touchdown as time expired to help lift Watsonville past Hollister in the quarterfinals.
But like most incoming high school freshmen from four years ago, the thought of playing flag football ended when they graduated middle school. However, that all changed when the California Interscholastic Federation sanctioned flag football as an official sport for girls starting in 2023.
Since then, colleges are beginning to launch their own flag football programs.
La Sierra head coach Brianne Talboom was also at Tuesday evening’s event, watching her future player sign away on the dotted line.
Talboom has competed, coached and officiated flag football for more than 25 years. She currently owns a 95 percent (196-4) winning record during her coaching tenure.
“I just love the atmosphere, overall,” Leon said. “It was calming to me, the area around it, too. That’s something I really look for in a school.”
