In what is set to be a big year for flag football in Newton County, the Lady Rams are looking to build on the strong reputation they already have.

The 2025-26 school year will be the first in which all three high schools will field a flag football team. Prior to this year, Newton was the only one of the three that had a team.

With multiple sports in contention for the “Newton Cup,” Gunn is eager to see flag football join in.

“It is going to be huge to have those other two schools be a part of this,” Gunn said. “Just the fact that we can play in the Newton Cup now. I know baseball, softball and football all do it. Now we will be able to be a part of that. Hopefully we can put a trophy in there that shows we are the best team in Newton County. I’ve been saying we are the best team in Newton County for years, but we were the only team so of course we were the best.”

Newton, Eastside and Alcovy will be apart of a new area that will consist of teams much closer to home.

“It helps out with our area,” Gunn said. “The last few years we have had to travel to Grayson. This year our area consists of the three schools here [in Newton County] and the three schools in Rockdale, so our area got smaller.”

As the one school that already had a team, the Lady Rams will enter the 2025-26 season after their best year yet.

An 18-7 finish that secured the No. 2 seed in the area were both program-bests for Newton in 2025.

Although the team lost a few seniors from last year, head coach Steven Gunn has big hopes for what is coming back.

“We were a young team last year, we had five seniors,” Gunn said. “We are returning a majority of those girls that have won a bunch of games — the most in Newton High School history and a playoff game. That is what they expect, they are expecting us to go out and win. We are not afraid of anybody.”

With a few seasons now under his belt, Gunn feels the team is in a spot where they can replenish their talent year-to-year.

“We are not replacing, we are just rebuilding," Gunn said. “[Similar] to what Georgia and Alabama do. We are just reloading.”

That mindset is what the team has carried into the summer as they have competed against other flag football teams over the offseason.

Most recently, the Lady Rams finished in second place at a flag football camp hosted by the Henry County Sheriff’s Office(HCSO). During the three-day event, Newton faced schools such as McEachern, Grayson, Peachtree Ridge, Paulding County and Pace Academy in the event.

For Gunn, the event provided the team a chance to test their skills against other quality teams.

"We had five teams in our group that were playoff teams like us,” Gunn said. “We got three really good games on that day against playoff teams. With it being roughly 90 degree heat, we were able to rotate girls in. I got a lot of girls that got a lot of playtime. We came back the next day and had a great opportunity to play some really great teams, because the top four teams from Tuesday and the top four teams from Wednesday got to play on Thursday.

“Unfortunately we got put in the losers bracket the second game in. We played McEachern, got put in the losers bracket and had to fight our way through the losers bracket and all the way through to the championship against McEachern again.”

Gunn noted how the team will also be able to watch back the film on all nine of their games as they hope to improve by the time week one rolls around.

The event also provided Gunn with a chance to see many of his new players, which feature some faces from the state champion girls basketball team.

“It was a great opportunity, we put some girls in a bunch of different spots,” Gunn said. “We have gotten a bunch of new girls to come out. Luckily, our girls basketball coach, Jawan Bailey, has been behind us and has pushed the basketball girls to come play. Girls like London Smith [and] Mya Perry are out there playing with us. We have those great athletes from basketball to go with the great athletes we already got like Aryanna Clark, Julianna Church and Madison Burrows.”

The HCSO camp allowed the team to compete in a summer that has already seen the team stay busy — something Gunn was intentional about.

“The girls love it, they look forward to it everyday,” Gunn said. “When I took over we didn't have a summer, and then the year before last in my first year we didn't have offseason workouts planned. After the season we didn't work out and we didn't do anything until tryouts This year, it’s entirely different. We worked out and lifted weights in August before we started in September. I gave them all of January off and came February we got right back in the weight room. We have been at it since February. We were averaging 20 girls a day during the workouts and that is just a testament to them wanting to get better.”

As for specifics, Gunn definitely had a few areas he wanted to improve upon as the Lady Rams look to reach the 20-win mark in 2025.

The No. 1 thing Gunn harped on was the ability to put his playmakers in spots to show their skills and make the plays.

“We want to keep up that same defensive mentality, we want to stop people on defense and score more on offense," Gunn said. “We are trying to find ways to get the ball more in the playmakers’ hands. We have a lot of playmakers on the offensive side of the ball, so it’s how we put the ball in their hands more often. I got a dynamic quarterback and she is great with the football, but I don’t want us to be one-dimensional. 

While the team continues to improve and sharpen their skills, Gunn noted the impact it has had on the team and the community.

“Girls have seen it, the NFl has pushed it with the Falcons getting behind it,” Gunn said. “It became an Olympic Sport. It is helping because it shows girls that they have an avenue to go play the sport that is probably the biggest sport in our country. They can go out and participate in football and do a lot of the same things that the boys are doing.

“[it’s] just them loving the sport and loving being out there, getting better and being a role mode. I have two little girls and my oldest wants to be a Newton Ram so bad. She says ‘Go Rams’ all the time.”