How Maurice Fitzgerald and a Wing-T offense led Hillsboro to first MNPS flag football title

Hillsboro's flag football team may not be aware just how much they owe to former Glencliff High football coach Jim Wilson.

Nearly 30 years ago, Wilson sat down with then-Pearl Cohn football coach Maurice Fitzgerald and taught Fitzgerald everything he knew about the Wing-T offense. Fitzgerald used it to capture back-to-back state championships with the Firebirds in 1996 and 1997.

Now he can add the inaugural Metro Nashville flag football title to his resume after Hillsboro shut out Hume-Fogg, 26-0, then knocked off Overton, 7-0, to claim the city championship Friday at Hillsboro High.

FLAG FOOTBALLWhy Nashville flag football's few female head coaches would love to see more

SANCTIONED SPORT?Why coaches, players think girls flag football will be the next TSSAA sanctioned sport

"This championship is for coach Wilson," Fitzgerald said. "He was an outstanding man and the Wing-T is his. He invited me and my wife over his house a long, long time ago and I sat down with him for six or seven hours and learned all I could about that offense."

Wilson coached the Colts from 1989-2005 and died in 2014. The school's $2.5 million football stadium and sportsplex is named in Wilson's honor. But while most high school football programs have moved away from the Wing-T, Fitzgerald felt it was a perfect fit for his flag football team.

"It can be hard to run," said Hillsboro quarterback Kamryn Miller who had a key interception late that set up the Lady Burros' score. "There's a lot of misdirection and it was kind of confusing when we were first taught it. But that's why we practice. We started to understand it. It just takes patience."

Hillsboro (8-1) is the third Middle Tennessee team crowned with a flag football title this year. Ravenwood won its second straight Williamson County title last week while West Creek captured the first Montgomery County title, beating Montgomery Central Monday.

Patience was wearing thin for late in a scoreless game Friday. Fitzgerald — who was inducted into the Metro Nashville Public Schools Sports Hall of Fame last year — admitted he was as nervous prior to the flag football championship as he was before his two state title games with Pearl-Cohn.

"This is every bit as sweet," he said. "It's the newness of it, the fact that it's the first in the city. All of those things had me pacing back and forth today."

Overton, which knocked off Pearl-Cohn, 16-15, in a triple-overtime semifinal, played a completely different style. The Bobcats threw it 17 times while Hillsboro threw it only seven. But it was Kamil Washum's scramble with over two minutes left in the game that sealed it for the Burros.

"I was going to throw it," Washum said. "But I had someone come after to me so I just took off."

Washum was a star point guard for Hillsboro's basketball team and also runs track. She missed the Burros early-season game to Hume-Fogg, Hillsboro's lone loss. She scored twice against Hume-Fogg on Friday. And assistant coach Scott Davis' defense pitched two straight shutouts within an hour of each other.

"The one thing that's not common with our young people is patience," Fitzgerald said. "The Wing-T demands it. "And once our girls figured it out and had faith in it, hey ... there you go."

Reach sports writer George Robinson at georgerobinson@theleafchronicle.com and on Twitter @Cville_Sports.