Just after making a break on a route at her opponents’ goal line, Gemma Stanley expected to be open for a throw from her quarterback, Spencer Jankowski, who rolled to her side of the field to avoid pressure. Then she got knocked down.
But Gemma Stanley wasn’t about to give up on the play — not with a trip to a national championship game on the line. She got to her feet as quickly as she could, stayed on the course and got just open enough for Jankowski to feel comfortable lobbing the ball her way. Despite tight coverage, she caught it in the end zone and ended the game by mercy rule, sending her Sentinels on to the grand finale.
That was on Jan. 10, almost exactly four years after the last time Gemma Stanley got to a national championship game and almost exactly five years since her flag football hobby became something more.
She and her older brothers, Michael and Anthony, have always been close and did just about everything together growing up. So when the boys started playing flag football, she wanted to get in on it as well.
“They asked if I wanted to play too and I was like, “Yeah, let’s go,” Gemma Stanley said. “I found it genuinely fun, so I continued.”
They played in Plant City’s youth rec league and often participated in the Optimist Club’s annual Punt, Pass and Kick contests. They also got pretty good at the sport. So when the United States Flag and Touch Football League’s annual National Championships tournament series came to Plant City for the first time in 2016, their father Michael got in touch with teams making the trek to Plant City that were in need of a few more players.
Coach Steve Jankowski’s Sentinels recruited players from Pennsylvania and Georgia as they traveled down from Youngstown, Ohio and completed the roster with Gemma and Anthony Stanley. Even though the siblings lived thousands of miles away from Youngstown, they enjoyed being on the team so much that they always rejoined the Sentinels whenever they’d come down for tournament play.
“I was a quiet kid, so I don’t think people realized I liked my team, but I got along with all the kids there,” Gemma Stanley said. “They’re good and they’re friendly. Our coach is really honest about everything and wanted us to also have fun. He’d congratulate us even when we lost.”
Gemma Stanley developed into a defensive specialist as time went on. She could play some wide receiver as needed, but locking down the quarterback was her bread and butter.
In 2017, the Sentinels made a run all the way to the USFTL’s championship game in the Youth 13-14 division. But Miami-based Ryan Football had the upper hand that day, winning 32-7. That was when Gemma Stanley started to realize she couldn’t settle for anything less than a championship win before she aged up into adult divisions. Though they tried hard for years, the Sentinels couldn’t recapture the glory of 2017.
Then 2020 happened. The Sentinels signed up for the 2021 FFWCT World Championships tournament in Panama City Beach, held Jan. 9 and 10, and Gemma Stanley knew she didn’t want to go out without a title. She wasn’t going to let a seven-hour drive get in the way of her goal.
“We were really hoping everything was worth it,” she said. “I was definitely giving it my all because we came so far and I didn’t want to spend all that money in vain knowing it was my last chance.”
Most teams in the tournament were no match for the Sentinels, who boasted a high-powered offense and a two-woman quarterback wrecking crew on defense.
“We were the only team with any girls in our age division,” Steve Jankowski said. “We had two girls and their rushing ability made the difference for us. They locked down quarterbacks so they couldn’t execute plays as efficiently as they wanted to.”
The Sentinels played three games on Jan. 9 and dominated their first two opponents. They opened up the tourney with a 34-0 win over Tallahassee Unconquered Jr. and a 42-6 win over i10-TLH.
The Tampa Dragons, whom the Sentinels eventually met in the championship game, were a much tougher out. Tampa found a way to cool down the Sentinels’ red-hot offense and keep the Ohio team on its toes.
“The first time we played Tampa, we got down to the end zone and they stopped us three times after we scored our first touchdown,” Steve Jankowski said. “That was more mistakes on our behalf than on theirs.”
The Sentinels did pick up an 8-0 win in that game, setting up the next day’s rematch with Unconquered in the semifinal round. Getting that win, Steve Jankowski said, was when he felt like the team had a real chance at winning that elusive national championship.
Following Gemma Stanley’s game-ending touchdown catch, the Sentinels drew a rematch with the Dragons with a title on the line. That one didn’t come any easier — in fact, Tampa held a 7-6 lead at halftime and put the Sentinels in the unfamiliar position of playing from behind. But the Sentinels were able to put another touchdown on the board in the second half, complete the two-point conversion and wrest control of the game flow out of the Dragons’ claws.
“They learned from their mistakes… once we got up 14-7, we forced them into a turnover and were able to control the rest of the clock,” Steve Jankowski said.
There was one more surprise for Gemma Stanley: she and her teammates thought there was one more game to play after that one, so she said the win was “kind of a shock.”
Now that she finally accomplished that goal, Stanley hopes to take flag football even further if she can. You can catch her on the field with Plant City High School’s team this season and, if all goes well in the future, perhaps even in college playing on a scholarship.