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Flag football head coach Melinda Nguyen blows her whistle\u00a0during practice Oct. 5 at Maverick Stadium. Nguyen is UTA\u2019s first flag football coach.<\/p>\n
Photo by Emmanuel Pizano<\/a><\/p>\n In December 2025, UTA named Melinda Nguyen as the school\u2019s first flag football head coach. Nguyen\u2019s arrival in Arlington, although her first Division I gig, is merely the latest milestone in a lifetime around flag football.<\/p>\n Nguyen\u2019s love of football started early, as she grew up in a football-playing family in Wheaton, Maryland, a\u00a0suburb of Washington, D.C. At around age 9, according to local magazine Bethesda, she was offered a spot on an all-girls flag football team.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople and boys told\u00a0me that I couldn\u2019t play,\u201d Nguyen said. \u201cThat drew me to wanting to play because I like proving people wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n She continued playing flag football until age 14, when the youth leagues ended. The boys were able to tackle the sport, but Nguyen had to settle for a switch to cross-country.<\/p>\n That was, until the Vietnamese Student Association at the University of Maryland in College Park came knocking. They had a women\u2019s flag football team and wanted Nguyen to join.<\/p>\n She started playing for the team, eventually attending the university, where a second organization, the\u00a0Filipino Cultural Association, recruited her as a freshman.\u00a0<\/p>\n Nguyen played quarterback for the two clubs, leading the teams to a combined nine championships in six years. She\u00a0credits her playing success to her experience.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d been playing for a very long time, and back then, even now, it\u2019s really rare to find players who have played since they were in elementary school,\u201d Nguyen said. \u201cMost of the players that we played against in college or with in college were introduced to the sport really late.\u201d<\/p>\n Her\u00a0connection to the clubs did not fade with graduation. After earning her bachelor\u2019s degree in English language and literature, Nguyen traded her flag belt for a whistle, becoming the teams\u2019 coach.\u00a0<\/p>\n Eventually, Nguyen took a part-time coaching role with a professional flag football team, the DMV Diamonds, who played in the Women\u2019s Flag Football Network.<\/p>\n At the same time as her stint with the Diamonds, Nguyen had a full-time\u00a0job as a first grade teacher at a nearby elementary school. She said the role of a grade school instructor isn\u2019t too different from that on the sidelines.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI would use a lot of my first-grade experience with my players, and I still do, actually, as team bonding or fun events,\u201d Nguyen said. \u201cCompetition is competition at any level, and if you can find ways to turn that competition into football-based or first-grade-based, then ultimately my whole belief is if they\u2019re having fun, then they\u2019re engaged.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2022, after teaching through the COVID-19 era, Nguyen realized which of her jobs she wanted to do full-time. She packed her bags from the bustling metro area where she grew up for the amber waves of grain in Salina, Kansas, taking the Kansas Wesleyan University flag football head coaching job.<\/p>\n \u201cI realized I have a lot of stuff to put on my resume in terms of football, so then I started Googling, went to Indeed, found the job, and I was like, \u2018I\u2019m just going to apply, and if nothing else, I get to practice my interview skills,\u2019\u201d Nguyen said. \u201cFlew out there, ended up loving it, and then moved out there like two weeks later.\u201d<\/p>\n The program was only in its third year of existence when Nguyen stepped onto campus, and over the next three years, the Coyotes went a combined 49-17, as she led the team to its first appearance in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics Flag Football Finals A Bracket in 2025.<\/p>\n Later that calendar year, Nguyen got an opportunity to coach the Filipino national women\u2019s flag football team in the International Federation of American Football Asia-Oceania flag football continental championships in Ningbo, China.<\/p>\n A flag football player runs during practice Oct. 5 at Maverick Stadium. UTA was the fifth Division I university to create a women’s flag football program.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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