Yes. We are working with the best two clubs in the region who routinely play in national events to provide pathways for our best and most committed players to practice with and travel to these tournaments on an individual basis. If you are interested in those opportunities and can fully commit to them, far in advance, as well as at least one midweek practice with those teams, we will make it happen. Contact David for more information.

We support the 7v7 game. While we might occasionally play 5v5, we are optimizing for the 7v7 game in practices, scrimmages, playdates, and tournaments.

Reach out to our Executive Director, Coach Danny (danny8894@comcast.net) or info@bayareaboom.com with specific questions. The Instagram account DM is always open as well.

ABSOLUTELY NOT! We would love your transparency on this issue up front and if you are, we’re all good. 70% of our returning players are Futures Roster players, meaning they want the option, if it’s presented to travel, but aren’t committed to it. What we require is advanced notice, with certainty, about tournament availability. The local tournament scene fills very quickly, and lazy Team Snapping is a recipe for not being asked to play in tournaments.

Read this one VERY carefully: We intentionally have allowed for parents to have a lot of flexibility with our program. But there are a few strict guidelines that need to be followed, starting with adding “context” and “over communication”. For tournaments, we need certainty. If you are marking your child “available” to play, you are saying, “if i’m chosen to play, we are in and will pay”. We need certainty from our players so that we can field a team. If there is no certainty, mark your availability as “No”, with a comment. You will be on the waitlist and added if there is room.  For playdates, we are more able to be flexible with “maybe”. But remember the rule–overcommunicate and add context. If we do not know 2 weeks out of your status because your Team Snap says “haven’t replied”, you are not living up to your commitment to the club.

For the 2026 season, the answers were “No”, and “Yes!”  Next Level is a recreational program playing 5v5 rules and a modified 7v7 game. We are a high school prep program based on 7v7 CIF rules. The games and rules are totally different and while there is some overlap in skills required to excel at both, the learning curve is much steeper for 7v7. We have a strong preference for players that are committed to the higher level of play and high school format and missing practices and scheduled games and tournaments to play Next Level is strongly, strongly discouraged. If your child is playing Next Level and you are skipping our practices or events on the same day, that won’t work. We have a ZERO tolerance for this. Don't do it.

On a case-by-case basis we will make exceptions for unanticipated issues like a player injury or a family relocation and refund fees. In the other scenario, and let’s hope this is not the case, we will prorate fees and return your money.

We have a number of players that guest play with us who can’t make practices enough, but want to stay close to our program. We welcome that, far more than we welcome the family that comes to less than 50% of the practices and cannot commit to any events. We again will have guest players, that also meet all the quality standards above, who will practice occasionally with us when our attendance numbers allow.

In the spirit of the Late Show with David Letterman, here are the top 4 reasons: 1. You or your child create excessive drama for the group; 2. You routinely are late on payments without explanation or communication; 3. You or your child are a negative influence on other parents or players; and 4. You signed up and attend significantly less practices than the average player. Luckily, this rarely happens yet but we certainly have suggested to a few families that they might want to look elsewhere and happily recommend them to other clubs. The reality is, we’ve all been around local sports organizations and know just about everyone and their kids, or know the people who knows you or your child. We do a pretty thorough job knowing who might not be a good fit and don’t anticipate this happening often.

We are building a community. We have a “zero tolerance for drama” policy from parents. We have a very low tolerance for drama policy for players. We are very deliberate with our expectations for conduct, and our bar is exceptionally and intentionally high. Relentless and excessive positivity is our aim. Spend 5 minutes talking to our high school leaders and you’ll quickly understand what our standards are and why we have them.

The Academy is for serious,  multi-sport student-athletes that want the option, but not the obligation, to compete in local, regional, and national tournaments as part of our approximately 6 month season. It is also for higher academic student-athletes that plan to play high school flag football.  If we are successful at what we’re doing, your child will be part of a high academic, high character community of varsity-ready flag football players.

The Academy is divided into two training groups that are roughly divided between high school and middle school student-athletes. For the past two years, that has meant High School U16-U18 and Middle School (U16-U14 + some U12) cohorts. We allow players, judged on a case-by-case basis, to play up age groups if they are developmentally and emotionally advanced. We also from time-to-time group our U14 eligible 9th graders with our U14-U12 middle schoolers. Another way of looking at it (we do), is two pools of players that are pooled based on physical and skill competence. For 2027 we expect many of our practices will be grouped 10th-12th graders in one cohort, and 9th-6th graders in the other.

We could have called our youngest cohorts, Boom Academy lite, but we didn’t. Boom! Next is our cohort of approximately 15-20 4th-8th graders that fill our 14U-10U teams. It differs from the Academy in that practices are only on Sundays, and will consist of 2-3 tournaments and 2-3 scrimmages as opposed to 4-6 tournaments, 3 playdates, and multiple scrimmages, not to mention the potential travel. We also start in February. We expect that our Boom! Next players will occasionally also guest play with our 14U middle school team.

To create the best competitive training environment, we limit the cohorts to around 36 players on the field at once or “per cohort”. We’ve found that that number ensures the best coaches to player ratios, ensures the proper amount of repetitions per position, and maximizes the experience for all. When we keep cohorts at 36, given other sport commitments, we tend to get 25-30 per cohort attending given other commitments.

Other than expanding our program for younger ages a smidgen through Boom! Next, our 12U offering, and offering more free clinics to help build the sport, we do not plan on growing.

We do things differently than most at Boom! We EMBRACE multi-sport athletes and their other commitments. In order to do that and accommodate other commitments to other travel ball sports, we have an “Academy” model where we practice and train together as cohorts. You don’t make a Boom Team Blue or Boom Team Orange. You earn a spot in the Academy in a cohort that is developmentally appropriate. Our rosters from tournament to tournament and playdate to playdate are more fluid and situationally dependent than other clubs.  An example to highlight this in action is our PPD playdates versus our end of year tournaments. For PPD playdates, our rosters are extremely fluid. For our later in the year tournaments, they tend to be more static with a core of 10 players that have developed some cohesiveness during the year. That doesn’t mean we cannot tell you what general group your daughter will play with most of the time. Lastly, we might from time to time decide to travel to tournaments to compete against top national teams. You will see on your registration that there is a checkbox for “travel tournaments”. For our travel rosters, players and families will have to commit months in advance and pay in advance to play these tournaments. You can think of it like a selected group formed with the sole purpose of winning a travel tournament. Those that want to play those tournaments are on our “travel roster”. Those that don’t, we ask if they are interested only if needed. We’ve called this our “Futures Roster” in the past.

We do have a number of rosters. We’ve established that. We have balanced rosters which create equal teams for scrimmages and playdates. We have ranked rosters by ability, with no regard for age or school year eligibility. We have rosters ranked by age eligibility for 1/1, for 8/1 eligibility dates. And we have rosters ranked by actual school year. Lastly, we have rosters with players ranked by position. If you want to know where your player stands on any of them, we’re  happy to share with you privately.  Having said that, our rosters are much more fluid than any similarly situated club environment you have probably played in. We do not publicize rosters. Ever. And we would appreciate having families and players that don’t need to brag that they are on the “A” team. Save the IG brags for when you make all league or MVP in high school. (Editorial Note: We have many of these kinds of players, and what we love most about our core group of leaders is that while they are league MVP’s, full scholarship award winners, national team pool level players, they are incredibly humble).

Ugh. Not really!  There are typically two main age cutoffs, depending on tournaments. Some use the age of the child as of 1/1, others use a school year with a cutoff 8/1. That means, certain kids will be eligible to play in different age groups depending on when the tournaments are held. This is also a reason to prefer the Academy structure, since from game to game or tournament to tournament, eligibility differences means team makeup differences. For local tournaments, the host club sometimes determines cutoffs that are not national standards, and usually to get their star player onto a favorable roster. We know, it’s awful and confusing!  If you would like to know specifically what age group your child is eligible for, just ask. We’ll have our AI administrator figure it out for you. The most significant cutoff at this point seems to be 8/1, which allows us from time to time to play some of our younger 9th graders with our 14U players at tournaments.

Yes. Our high school students must maintain a minimum 3.3 weighted GPA in order to play at Boom! Our goal across our high school players is a cumulative 3.8 GPA. For more context, our internally documented “Blue Team” sported a 3.95 cumulative GPA and 16 of our 32 players had a 3.8 unweighted or better GPA. We have been blessed with student athletes that care about being a student first, and an athlete second, and parents that support that mandate. Our philosophy is simple: We want our student-athletes to be committed equally on the field and off the field. We will make exceptions on a case-by-case basis and consider many factors, but a players’  ability on the field will never be one of them.

We do not have a GPA requirement for middle schoolers. Having said that, it’s really important to us that every high schooler prioritizes their schoolwork. It is non-negotiable for Boom! This is something we stress to every parent of a middle schooler that is a rising high schooler. If you are not sure if your player will be able to meet our GPA expectations, and if they don’t have a legitimate reason, it is best to not join Boom! We will always make exceptions for issues outside the players’ control, e.g. documented learning disabilities or neurodivergence, medical and health emergencies, or personal/family hardships.

If your grades fall below our standards, we will address it privately and create a probationary period and try to understand the issues behind it. It is important to remember that these are the same things that happen at the local high schools and will, and all of our coaches, both formal and informal, are coaches at the local high schools. For high school students, we look at transcripts and cumulative GPA’s.

Last year, we created Boom! Next as an adjunct to our Academy for middle schoolers that want lesser commitment and may need more development time, especially in small groups. . It runs the hour before our regular practice sessions and includes high achieving mentors from our high school group and our coaches. It is designed as an on-ramp to give players new to flag more repetitions doing basic skills so that they can quickly integrate with our Academy and travel teams, whose practices include more strategy and tactics. Additionally, we will be offering many free and paid camps, clinics and perhaps a more recreational approach to the sport during the year. Stay connected to the Instagram account for more details.

Our mission is to attract players and families that enhance our community, not only on the field, but off of it. That means we are looking for families and players that can make our community better and more enjoyable for all. The concepts of “building” and “development” are important to Boom!. While we would love to have all of the best flag football players in the region on our squad, and we have a lot of them, we are more excited by all of the best flag football players and families who demonstrate the following qualities in sports and in life: Integrity; Accountability; Effort; Commitment; Fantastic Upfront and Transparent Communication; and Resilience. Those are pillars we can develop and build upon. We will optimize our selection process around those values. In short, while your child might be the best player on a field, that is insufficient to become a part of our program.

Travel tournaments are the outlier. Most of our game activity will occur locally, including as many playdates and scrimmages as we can schedule against top local travel teams. You will never at Boom feel like there wasn’t enough game activity! Last year, we played in 5 local tournaments, 3 6-8 team format, all day playdates, and 4 formal playdates against other clubs.   Other than 2 Monday holiday all day events, most of those occurred on Sundays between January and the end of June, with an occasional Saturday mixed in. All of these are for ALL players, not just those checking the “I will prioritize Boom and want to be considered for the travel team roster”. From January-April, we have a bias for development, meaning playdates and scrimmages over tournaments given our goal to develop the best high school players, not win tournaments. For May-June, we have a bias to enter tournaments with rosters oriented towards winning.

The Academy tryouts are by invitation only and you must request an invitation to a tryout. Boom! Next tryouts (see below) are open to all. Our tryouts will be held in November and early December.  If space permits, additional tryouts will be held on a rolling basis in conjunction with our weekly training sessions that either can provide an on ramp during our season, or a leg up in being evaluated for the following season.  Follow the Instagram account, fill out a request to tryout at www.bayareaboom.com or contact one of the coaches for more opportunities if your athlete cannot make the initial tryout dates. We expect to return at least 75% of our players but plan to keep a few academy spots open into January/February.

For our Academy teams, that depends on the number of graduating players. Last year we had 8 seniors. This year we only have 2 seniors and we expect that 75% of our 2027 players will come from our existing player pools. We won’t know until close to tryouts but our best guess as of September 2026 is that we will have roughly 8 spots for high school players that are new, and another 8 spots for middle schoolers in our Academy. We generally will leave a few spots open through January/February in both groups. For our Boom! Next 14U/12U/10U group that plays February through May, this will be our first year and we expect 15-20 players across two teams.

We routinely invite new players and their families to come practice with our Academy teams or come play in a playdate or scrimmage. If space becomes available, we will admit new players after the tryout season. We try to keep a few roster spots open into January/February for outstanding student-athletes and their similarly wonderful families. Additionally, players get injured and that sometimes opens up spots. When we invite players to our practices, our objective is not to fill a spot, it’s to let you and your daughter experience our program, and for us to get to know you better. We will typically and on an ad hoc basis when we see that there is going to be room in a practice session, invite you back if we think you are a great fit for our program.

In an era of youth sports club shopping, we don’t like shoppers and we are building long term relationships, not conducting transactions. Because we are sufficiently different from other clubs, we will take our time making decisions on families and players, and we will give you plenty of time to make a commitment to us. We encourage you to try out at other clubs, but frankly we are different enough that up front, you should know whether you want our flavor of ice cream or not. This is especially true for families and players outside our immediate area that we may not know well. On the bright side, you get to practice with us and maybe guest play with us in a tournament or playdate without commitment.

Anyone can play at Boom! that demonstrates the aforementioned qualities. BUT, we do serve our local high school varsity programs, primarily Las Lomas, Clayton Valley, Northgate, Acalanes, Campolindo, Miramonte, College Park, Alhambra, and Carondelet. That means that yes, we will welcome anyone from anywhere, but we do have a preference for local players that live within 30-ish minutes of our practice facilities.

Generally, yes, but not because of the reason you think. We spend a lot of time getting to know players and their families and with players we’ve met once or twice, it’s awfully hard to know them, and know you, like we know the players that play for our coaches or play on other sports teams in our community. What has worked is to continue to invite players that show the qualities we look for, back to practice with our teams, sometimes for a month or so, to learn more about you. After tryouts, many players and families have joined us through this process once they are comfortable with us, and us with them.

To be considered for the Academy or Boom! Next, you must attend a tryout. You can email info@bayareaboom.com, or one of the coaches to attend a tryout. You must be registered in the system to attend a tryout and have filled out a facility waiver. You can register on the site.

Our registration for the Academy is by Invitation Only. What you are signing up for on the site is to be considered for the Academy. We will be inviting those that signed up to trainings in April and May to evaluate for the Academy, and if accepted, a password protected registration link will be given to you followed by a sign up process.

We tend to take the summer off starting mid June. We run a number of paid and free camps and clinics led by our coaches and players. The reason we take the summer off is that if you are reading all of these FAQ's, you'll note that we are optimizing players for high school flag football. Our high school players start summer workouts in June for their respective high schools. And while we ocassionally may bend the rules and put together tournament teams during the summer, it's more likely we'll let players and coaches prepare fully for high school.

We will provide all flags and balls for practices. Players purchase a mouthguard, practice jersey, a uniform, and a set of flags separately. We highly recommend purchasing headgear as well from Gamebreaker. Use this link for our custom headgear: https://gamebreaker.com/shop/bay-area-boom-girls-flag/

Costs vary with location, but typical travel tournament events depending on format can cost between $400-$550 per team (likely 10-12 players) for typically a minimum of 3-4 games.  Our goal is to evaluate, as a team, tournament options with a preference for local tournaments within 3-4 hours of driving.

We realize similar programs are charging almost $300 per month or even more. The Academy charges $1050 for the season and Boom! Next costs $600. Tournaments and playdate expenses are billed separately. To give you a sense of those costs, an average tournament will run $500-$550 per team (typically $40-50 per player), and the average playdate or scrimmage costs $10-15 per player. We have been very intentional about keeping costs down for families and have generous sponsors that help underwrite this program.  For 2026/27, we will be including some tournament and league fees upfront but you can guarantee that we will continue to keep this as a program that far overdelivers value over cost.

No. It is a full season commitment. We spread out payments to make it easier to afford, but you are committing to the full program. On a case by case basis we will make exceptions for unanticipated issues like a player injury or a family relocation and refund fees.

All costs associated with tournaments, playdates, travel, and uniforms will be charged separately. With respect to pricing increases, we will evaluate annually the optimum pricing relative to the value we are able to deliver. But itemizing: 1. Uniforms and Practice Jerseys: You should anticipate paying for a practice jersey (approx $35) and for uniforms another $135-150.  Everything else is optional; 2. Travel Tournaments:  For travel tournaments requiring a hotel stay and flights, we will include the coaches’ travel in the overall team budget. That is our only "markup”; 3. We may incur player registration fees for the PPD League or other leagues we play in; 4. Playdates: Our playdates we keep costs ridiculously low and should not total more than $10-$20 per player per playdate. We typically split the cost of fields and referees across clubs.

At this point, we do not offer scholarships in a formal way. We are happy to work with you if cost is a concern if you meet all of our other criteria to play with Boom!

We aim to keep costs low with zero markup. A uniform kit for tournament teams will typically cost $150-$175, which includes jerseys, shorts, flags and headgear. Practice jerseys typically cost $30-40.

The uniform cycles take 3-4 weeks. We do have some loaner uniforms, though we are limited to two sizes. We are not like other sports, we aren’t planning on going through uniform cycling every 2 years to create revenue but plan instead to use the same jersey as long as we can. We will have to work through these issues on a case-by-case basis.  Practice jerseys are not an issue and we typically have plenty in stock.

Our Academy begins with tryouts in November and open play events in December. Our formal season will begin in January and run through the 2nd week of June for most players with an end of year celebration scheduled for the second Sunday in June. For our 12U/10U Boom! Next, our season will begin the first weekend in February and run through May.

The highest level competitive athletes from amateurs to professionals come to Real Neal Sports for training. Headquartered at Universal Sports Academy, where we practice, Real Neal Sports is integrated into our curriculum, providing not only a competitive advantage for flag football, but cross-sport extensibility. Simply put, serious athletes at the youth and professional levels and colleges (St. Mary’s), trust Real Neal Sports. So do we. We expect all of our athletes to complain about Real Neal workouts, and attend all of them. It’s a rite of passage.

Most practices occur on Sundays 5-9 PM. U16-U14 (and some U12’s)  cohort (remember above, the age is just a guideline) typically practice in the early slot, Olders in the later slot. This year we plan to introduce 6-8 Friday night practices (and a few scrimmages) and socials during the early part of the season to build cohesiveness. We have found that this Sunday practice schedule is the best time so that all of our multi-sport commitment athletes can attend most of the practices. Boom! Next trains 3:30-5 on Sundays.

As parents and local coaches, we know the vagaries of field time in the Bay Area.  We solved that problem. The Universal Sports Academy in Martinez, one of only 2 regulation sized indoor turf fields in the Bay Area is our home and supports regulations sized 5v5 girls flag and training for 7v7. Our training sessions occur at the same time, at the same place, year round, with occasional movement to a local high school where we can practice on regulation fields or hold scrimmages.

Our aim is to host as many games as possible during that same window, 5-9pm on Sunday nights. For PPD events that are on MLK and Presidents Day, games are all day 9AM-4PM in Danville. For PPD games, they are designed to be held 4-8pm on Sundays.  For local tournaments, they typically are organized as follows: Middle school games 9AM-1PM; High School games 12PM-5PM. That is a rough portrayal of the tournaments we have played in.

In the past, we have tried to limit team structured practices until later in the year. We plan for 2027  to practice more in our tournament team rosters to build more chemistry for both travel and local tournaments. You should expect that we will hold approximately 6 separate practices per season and occasionally run drills in team formats during our regular practices.

Many times during the year we will be attending tournaments or playdates on Sundays. We typically will not practice when that happens.  Boom! Players that want to get their work in are free to attend Real Neal sessions on Sunday mornings at 9AM for their speed and recovery workouts.

This year, we are integrating practice plans and rotating coaches in order to ensure that we have a programmatic, but skill level appropriate approach that prepares all Academy players for high school 7v7 flag football. If you cannot make a high school session, players are free to attend the earlier middle school session. We allow middle schoolers to train with our high school group on a case-by-case basis with the main variable being safety, commitment level and space availability.

We don’t anticipate drop in opportunities but may expand the program to earlier hours on Sunday or Saturday to support demand.

That depends. As long as there are no conflicts and we aren't playing, we have no problem with guest playing with other clubs at travel tournaments as long as you are transparent about it. We have amazing relationships with a number of local clubs that travel more than we do and are always in communication with them for opportunities for ou players. It's up to you and your family to not make it an issue for Boom! This year for our top players, we will also be providing opportunities to guest play with a partner local club at national and other travel tournaments.

We founded PPD along with 3 other clubs to change the game. That’s not just talk. The mission is simple: 1. Control quality of play to ensure highest level of competition. 2. Control behavior of players, coaches, and parents. We do not tolerate the BS from other youth sports. We don’t swear, we don’t yell, and frankly, our motto is that behavior that falls short of the kind of behavior you would display going over to your close friends’ house for dinner is unacceptable. We live the “do unto others as you would …”you get the point; 3. Be the opposite of professionalized youth sports. Yes, the opposite. The money grab concept is out. PPD events are all designed around sharing resources and breaking even. A typical event will feature 4x the play time at 1/4th the cost of other local and regional flag tournaments. Simply put, PPD is great people, great clubs, the highest quality of play coming together FOR THE KIDS.  It is only available to a select group of clubs in the Bay Area.

We support a number of clubs whose tournaments are well run. Our intention is to play at least 4 and no more than 6 tournaments locally. Should the opportunity arise and enough players want to travel, we will aim to travel to Southern California or Las Vegas. A full tournament schedule will be provided at tryouts that will include events each month January-June.

While we prioritize 4-6 local tournaments during our season, we will again attempt to put together a travel tournament team. There are tournaments in February and March in Southern California and Las Vegas that we have had our eyes on, though in the past it has been too challenging to fill a competitive roster to make the trips.

We have two Executive Directors, Danny Rodriguez and Dave Cooney. Danny and Dave oversee all coaching, programming and operations. You don’t have to go very far to find someone that knows Danny and Dave in the girl’s youth sports community. They are lifers in their communities. Danny  has been a local girls coach for over 30 years and is an integral part of the College Park flag football and softball programs. Dave is a local coaching legend, leading softball and football programs for over 30 years in the community and for Clayton Valley High School.  We regularly have the head coaches from Alhambra, College Park, Las Lomas, and Clayton Valley at our practices, playdates, and tournaments in addition to our other Boom! Head Coaches. Please visit our website for a complete list of our coaches. Behind the scenes, David Stern is the brainchild behind Boom! and the wizard behind the curtain. David has been a part of the youth sports landscape in Contra Costa County for years, after a long career in venture capital in Silicon Valley.

Danny Rodriguez is our Executive Director. Start there for any issues that require immediate resolution applicable only to your player. For broader concerns, reach out to David Stern. We are building this based on feedback from our community. We are still in startup mode, the cake has not been baked. We are making tweaks all the time to the program. Constructive feedback that is programmatic, positive or negative, is not only welcomed, it is needed. “Programmatic” means if your feedback or suggestions apply mostly to your child, Danny is a better resource. If it’s applicable to the majority of players, feel free to reach out to david@bayareaboom.com. He welcomes the good, the bad, and the ugly.