Inaugural Pahrump Valley Girls Flag Football Team Finishes 0-16, Shows Resilience

Pahrump Valley High School’s inaugural girls flag football team completed its first season with an 0-16 record, but coaches and players framed the year as progress rather than failure. Launched from scratch in January by Coach Corbett, the Trojans used the season to teach fundamentals, experiment with schemes, and give local student-athletes a new outlet for fitness and leadership.

Every touchdown, tackle, and tackle-avoidance marked a milestone for Pahrump Valley High School’s first-ever girls flag football team. The Trojans flexed multiple different offensive schemes as they rotated between Nixon in the wildcat, Nereyda Gonzalez in the gun and Savannah Thompson out of the pistol. Senior RB/WR/QB Diona Nixon displayed flashes in the pan of the legendary rusher Bo Jackson as she ripped multiple long rushes throughout the year, using her speed advantage as a prior soccer star this past fall and lining up in the backfield with freshman Ma’liyah Collins.

Anchoring the defense, Ember Castaneda-Dabney, Nixon, Collins, Thomson and Jazmyn Herrera were constantly in the mix disturbing opposing offenses. Herrera did a great job with the special teams unit learning how to punt a football for the first time, similar to her to a free kick out of the box. Those position groupings and personnel experiments gave underclass players game reps and junior-senior leaders chances to teach on-field adjustments.

Corbett said, “I’m very happy with what I saw and how the girls grew individually and as a whole.” The coach also noted the team made progress in game management: “They’ve learned that we kept the score to around 40 and we scored a couple times as well.” He called the season “a good starting point and good building block for years to come,” and added, “Those are my couple of goals that I had this year.”

Beyond wins and losses, the program’s local impact is practical and civic. Expanding girls sports in Pahrump increases opportunities for routine physical activity, strengthens school ties, and creates role models for younger students in a rural county where organized youth options can be scarce. For athletes such as Nixon and Collins, flag football provided continued athletic engagement after fall soccer and a pathway to develop speed, agility, and tactical awareness that transfer across sports.

The offseason will be a test of whether that building block becomes a platform. Coach Corbett and the returning players now have a season of film, a clearer sense of position depth, and community interest to turn into training, recruitment, and improved competitiveness. For families and supporters in Nye County, the first season delivered something more durable than a scoreboard: a new team, new skills, and a visible pipeline for girls’ sport in Pahrump.