The players took the field on a recent afternoon in colorful uniforms — blue and orange for one team, red and black for the other. Flags were clipped tightly to their waists.
These weekly flag football games have long been a treasured Sunday tradition around the D.C. area. Before the whistle was blown, the coaches, referees and players paused for a moment of silence and a prayer for a man who had been shot and killed days earlier after playing the sport they love.
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“Gone too soon, O’ Lord,” Temi Ajayi, a 30-year-old wide receiver on the “Disciples,” prayed as he was surrounded by his teammates last month. “Flag football is supposed to be fun, it’s supposed to bring the family together.”
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Aaron “Ace” Wiggins, 26, had only joined the regional flag football community over the summer, but his skills landed him a spot in an All Star Tournament on Oct. 3. Three days later, Wiggins was fatally shot after a dispute at a pickup game on a field near an elementary school on Capitol Hill, officials said.
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At the time, D.C. police said Wiggins was shot by a player on the opposing team. Neither team has been identified officially by police or officials involved in local leagues. At an Oct. 13 community meeting, D.C. Police Cmdr. Ralph McLean told residents some people at the game were not cooperating with authorities. As of Monday evening, police had not made an arrest.
The shooting stunned the flag football community, which has been rooted in the District, Maryland and Virginia for decades, and left many wanting answers. In a statement to The Washington Post, Emerald Long, Wiggins’s girlfriend, said she wants justice for her and their young son.
For D.C.-area residents who play, flag football is more than a Sunday hobby. The sport serves as an outlet to build lifelong bonds, promote a family atmosphere and network with players from across the country at tournaments. The fields are meant to be a place of safety and camaraderie, often steering people away from violence in the streets, players and coaches said.
“Flag football is a community vibe, bringing young Black men together, young Black women together,” said Darius Felder, who plays on a flag football team and recruited Wiggins for the All Star Tournament. “I’m not understanding this situation ... everybody wants to understand.”
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Wiggins reached out to Felder in August with an interest in the sport, Felder, 30, said. He had seen Felder’s Instagram page, which features Felder’s videos and signature podcast about flag football called “Tap In,” which has more than 2,000 followers.
On any given Sunday, over a dozen teams from various leagues in the area, including the Washington Area Flag Football League (WAFFL), Inner-City Flag Football League (ICFFL) and the DMV Flag Football League (DMVFFL), face one another on D.C. and Maryland fields. Vendors with grills often line up nearby and spectators gather in the bleachers.
Craig Mimms, co-owner and operator of the DMVFFL, said some players travel between leagues or play in more than one league. Women’s and coed leagues also operate in the region.
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Each year in January, D.C. area teams participate in national and world championships in Florida. The WAFFL league is preparing for the National Championships hosted by the United Flag Football League (UFFL) in Orlando, and the DMVFFL is heading to the Flag Football World Championships in Tampa hosted by the Flag Football World Championship Tour (FFWCT). Hundreds of teams compete.
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“It’s an accumulation of all the year’s hard work,” Mimms said.
Travis Bruce, a DMVFFL player, said playing every Sunday and getting the opportunity to travel across the country means “more than football.”
“It saved my life,” Bruce, 32, said. “I played sports growing up, I did a little bit in college, but then there was the situation of being a Black guy from Southeast D.C. dealing with society.”
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After his godfather reached out to him about playing flag football, Bruce joined and has been playing for over 10 years. The sport provided him a path away from “drugs and guns,” Bruce said.
“You meet amazing people, you network. They put you on the right track,” Bruce said. “People depend on it for a long time.”
The leagues are currently in the fall season. Sundays were chosen for most league games because youth sports teams typically use the fields on Saturdays, Commissioner Theodore “Smoke” Holmes, of the WAFFL league, said.
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Holmes, 61, knows flag football better than most. He remembers getting involved at 17, when the game was still being played as touch football without the flags. He has risen from a player and coach to a team owner and commissioner of the WAFFL league. Seated on a bleacher row next to the fields at Colmar Manor Community Park in Maryland one recent Sunday, Holmes watched the games as players and coaches called out, “Hey, Smoke!” from the sidelines. His daughter, Sade Holmes, 29, sat alongside him wearing a hoodie to ward off the chill.
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There are rules and standards to “the game,” Holmes said. Players, who pay dues and fees, must be at least 18 years old, refrain from using profanity or foul language, and from physical contact, such as trying to tackle another player. There are different playing styles on the field, but most games involve teams of eight, Holmes said.
Though players come for football, they can count on each other outside of it, Holmes said. He owns a carwash in the District named, “Smoke Car Wash,” providing younger players with job opportunities.
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“Everybody needs to be a part of something. When you have young gentleman coming out of high school, didn’t make college, didn’t make the NFL, so they need somewhere to go. If not, they go hang somewhere else,” Holmes said as he stared at his teams playing in the field in front of him. “I try to keep them off the streets ... I’m thinking that I’m keeping them out of trouble.”
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In his more than 40 years as part of the flag football community, Holmes said, he hasn’t seen violence so closely impact the game.
“We’re trying to get through it,” Holmes said of the Oct. 6 shooting. “It’s bringing us closer, because we don’t know why it happened.”
Jeff Hawkins, 37, a coach in the WAFFL league, coached Wiggins during the All Star Tournament, which brought players from different leagues together, in Greenbelt, Md., and was impressed by his skills and energy. So he was excited when he received a message from him shortly after, “Yoo, I’m tryna play bro.” After they spoke in person at the tournament, they made plans for Wiggins to join the team Hawkins coaches, Team FII, but Wiggins somehow ended up at the Oct. 6 pickup game with another team.
The teams that played each other that Wednesday evening did not have a D.C. Parks and Recreation permit to be on the field, located near an elementary school on Capitol Hill, Michael Tucker, a DPR spokesperson said. Though the fields are public and teams can use them, without a permit, the game would be a “non-permitted activity,” Tucker added.
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During the Oct. 13 community meeting, McLean, who is commander of the First District, said investigators had gotten the team rosters and were going through the names “one-by-one” to find a suspect.
For Felder, who had helped Wiggins get involved in flag football, the killing has been particularly painful.
When Wiggins reached out to Felder to get his foot in the door, Felder was excited his podcast had reached a new potential player. He said players had helped him through tough times, including his mother’s 2020 death, and the game provided him with a “family” on and off the field. He wanted other men to have that same support.
“I just tried to help Ace,” Felder said. “To get him out there to have some more fun.”
Following Wiggins’s death, flag football media duo and players P.J. Green and Mike Smith coined the message, “Pull flags, not triggers” to promote the nonviolence message they say the community has always had. Felder reposted the slogan on his podcast page.
Peter Hermann contributed to this report.