The Godfather of Illinois high school flag football.
That's the nickname Gustavo Silva has earned from coaches around the Prairie State in recent years.
Coaches around the state credit the Director of Football Development for the Chicago Bears
as one of the major reasons flag football has exploded as a varsity sport within the Illinois High School Association (IHSA), which will host its third-ever sanctioned state championship on Saturday, Oct. 17."I like to call (Gustavo) the 'Godfather of flag football in Illinois,'" Maine South football coach Carlos Panizo told USA TODAY Sports. "You have to look at Gustavo and the people he has in place to assist him; the success they’ve had. Going from pilot to state-sanctioned in two years. It’s amazing
as a fan of the sport.
"We are super fortunate that Gustavo is leading the team. As a coach in the sport, I feel so blessed to know him; he's done so many things to promote the girls."
USA TODAY Sports talked to several flag football coaches and the IHSA about the impact Silva has had on flag football in the state of Illinois.
"Gus deserves the world for what he's done for girl athletes in the state," Willowbrook flag football coach Rachel Karos told USA TODAY Sports. "Even if it weren't growing anywhere else, I think Gus would have still believed in flag football for the state."
Chicago Bears pilot flag football program
While the NFL being in lockstep with state associations on flag football isn't new, Silva said the Bears took a much different approach to advocate for flag football in Illinois than other NFL teams.
"We actually initiated it," Silva told USA TODAY Sports. "We didn't just support it. We reached out to CPS (Chicago Public Schools) about piloting a league."
Silva said he worked with Juliana Zavala, who was the senior manager of elementary sports for Chicago Public Schools and girls flag coordinator, to get the pilot program going in the state. Zavala is now the Director of Athletics at University of Chicago Laboratory Schools.
"We tried to do the pilot program in 2020, unfortunately, COVID-19 hit," Zavala told USA TODAY Sports. "But in 2021, when we started the program, our goal was six-to-eight teams. When I reached out to the Chicago Public Schools athletic directors, to our surprise, there was (interest) from about 26 schools.
"I said, 'Hey Gus, instead of six-to-eight, how about 26?' Without hesitation, he said, 'Let me ask my staff.' The McCaskey family, Kevin Warren and everyone else have been so supportive."
The McCaskey family is the controlling and majority ownership family of the Bears.
From the IHSA's side of things, while flag football was on the radar, the executives wanted to see if the interest was there from schools for participation.
According to IHSA Associate Executive Director Tracie Henry, for a sport to be sanctioned, it needed 10% of its members, so 80 of the roughly 800 schools in the state, to agree to sanction the sport.
"We needed to hear this from our membership," Henry told USA TODAY Sports. "We needed to hear that our schools wanted it, not necessarily the NFL wanted it."
In 2021, Silva, the Bears and CPS ran a successful pilot league with 21 teams.
"We played in the second game of the pilot season in 2021," Taft High School flag football coach Germaine Padilla told USA TODAY Sports. "Watching the first game, I remember a girl intercepted a pass, and everyone froze. She did not know what to do. ... It was a funny moment you had to appreciate it. In Year 6, that's not the case anymore."
Padilla added that the Bears provided cleats, helmets and uniforms for the CPS schools.
"It was a great thing they started with Chicago Public Schools. The district is a lot of times underfunded," Padilla said. "They did everything right, as far as a pilot program."
In Year 2, the pilot league moved to include teams from the Rockford area and other suburban schools, which brought the number of teams up to 60. Taft won the state championship in the second year of the Bears' pilot program.
In 2023, the number rose to 100 total schools, allowing the sport to be eligible to be sanctioned by the IHSA as a varsity sport.
"We were able to be sanctioned in February 2024, in just three years, which is the fastest sport ever to be sanctioned in Illinois," Silva said. "So the Bears are very proud of our role in that. But we know we're just starting to scratch the surface."
Henry gives credit to Silva for the growth of the sport in Illinois.
"Gustavo is great. He's such an advocate for the sport," Henry said. "You constantly see him at games promoting the sport, interacting with officials and talking with coaches. He's very visible when it comes to the sport. He's been such an advocate for the sport at the local level. If it wasn't for his involvement, it probably would not have moved as quickly here in Illinois."
Growth in numbers
Emerson De La Cruz, a senior athlete for Maine South, did not play flag football during her freshman season. The reason? It was not a varsity sport, as it was not sanctioned by the IHSA. She played on the volleyball team instead.
In her sophomore season, after the sport was sanctioned, she joined the Hawks' flag team, won a state championship in 2025 and is now committed to Nebraska to play college flag football.
"I wanted to play a real sport rather than a club sport," De La Cruz told USA TODAY Sports. "When (flag football) became a varsity sport, I dropped volleyball immediately and ran to flag football."
Her story is one of many with different athletes following the same path, one that Silva foresaw.
"What we wanted to do with the sport is create opportunities for girls that maybe hadn't found their niche yet, that hadn't found their sport," Silva said. "But then also for those other girls that are playing other sports that, maybe it's burnout, or they're not elite in it, to try something else."
Henry and Padilla credit Silva for building up the rosters and numbers for teams through camps he and the Bears hold for flag football.
"You're really seeing the revolution of the athletes," Padilla said. "I think about when we first started playing; it was take whoever wanted to come out. No one really wanted to give it a shot. This year, I've seen so many girls just crossing over from other sports."
What's next as flag football continues to grow in Illinois?
According to Henry, in 2024, 154 schools had a team in the first year of flag football being sanctioned. That number jumped to 223 in 2025 and 234 in 2026.
"With this being the third year of the state series, you really see the expansion through geography," Henry said. "So now we've got Belleville East and Belleville West, Mosquito and Edwardsville, which are at the southernmost points of our state competing. We've got Danville in the Eastern part of the state competing, as well as Normal, Normal West and Bloomington, all teams in that central area.
"Looking back into 2024, the first year of the state series, our furthest team we had competing south would be Bradley Bourbonnais, which is more of a south suburb. But now you see the geography expanding down to the central and southern parts of the state."
Once the sport reaches 300 programs playing, the IHSA would allow it to have two classifications, which both Henry and Silva agree would help continue to grow the sport.
Silva compared how a school like Harvard High School, roughly 63 miles northwest of Chicago and seven miles from the border of Wisconsin, could compete with a school like Stevenson High School, a school in the northern suburbs of Chicago.
Stevenson had an enrollment of 4,758 students for the 2025-26 school year, while Harvard had 815.
"Those two schools are very different in size," Silva said. "Those schools have to now compete against each other for the same state championship. When there are multiple classes and the small schools see they can compete with the schools at their levels, I think that's when some of the smaller schools are going to come in."
Two classifications and 300 schools is not enough for Silva. He wants to take it several steps further.
"There are roughly 800 schools in the state of Illinois," Silva said. "The way I look at it, we still have well over 500 schools left that we can have a flag football team. That's our goal. ... We eventually see girls' flag football being a two-classification sport and eventually three classes. And then we'll see where it goes from there."
Creating new opportunities in professional football for females
Silva hired Rimon Kari, a former flag football quarterback who led Willowbrook to a 2022 state championship in the Bears pilot league, as a football development associate with the Bears.
"In my position as the Director of Football Development, I was the person responsible for this whole thing and nurturing, growing and advocating for it," Silva said. "Now I see it as my role to continue to grow this, to continue to create high school opportunities, college opportunities, and eventually going to lead to professional opportunities.
"There may be hundreds of roles, roles like my role, that a lot of these girls never knew about in professional football."
The Godfather of Illinois flag football wants to see flag football continue to grow in Illinois.
"They call him the Godfather and they call me the Godmother," Zavala said. "It's funny that's still a thing. He's trying to grow the game not only in the state of Illinois, but he does it in the U.K.; he goes to Spain. So he really values everything behind what it means to have this inclusive sport for females. It is amazing to have a male ally.
"He gets the big picture, trying to get more females coaching girls... He's the Godfather.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Why coaches call this Chicago Bears executive the ‘Godfather’ of Illinois flag football
