All-Minnesota Player of the Year in flag football: Anoka’s Maddy Freking

Maddy Freking is no stranger to shutting down any and all arguments that what she excels in are “boys sports.”

Anoka’s senior quarterback is the Star Tribune’s inaugural All-Minnesota Player of the Year in flag football after leading the regular season of the new Vikings-sponsored league in passing yards (2,381), passing touchdowns (53) and passing accuracy (60.7%) for players with 200 or more attempts.

She quarterbacked her Tornadoes team to an undefeated regular season (10-0) and the No. 3 seed in June’s state tournament, where Anoka came up just short against Centennial, 31-27, in the quarterfinals.

“I didn’t know how big [flag football] would be,” Freking said. “It was just something new in the spring” — and it became much more.

Freking first made headlines when, in 2019, she became just the sixth girl to pitch in the Little League World Series, playing for the Coon Rapids-Andover baseball team.

Since then, it’s been no secret: She’s got an arm.

Now a 6-foot shortstop, Freking is committed to St. Thomas for softball and was a member of this spring’s All-Minnesota softball team. She is also Anoka basketball’s all-time leading scorer and rebounder, helping this year’s Tornadoes squad return to the Class 4A state tournament for the first time since 2004.

Her assistant basketball coach, Trey Delamarter, knows Freking is a special athlete, so when he got involved with coaching Anoka’s new flag football team, he pitched to Freking that she should join.

Freking was immediately interested. Her older brother, Evan, had been a quarterback at Anoka, and since she was a tall gunslinging shortstop with the coverage-reading ability of an elite basketball player, of course Freking would be a quarterback, too.

“She’s like, ‘Yeah, I’m in,’ ” Delamarter said. He told her to make sure it was OK with her softball coach. “I don’t care, I’m doing it,” he said she told him.

Unlike with her other sports, which have become second nature to Freking, “I didn’t know what to expect coming in,” she said. Even though she had run routes for her brother in their yard and watched plenty of tackle football, rules and schemes differed in the fast-paced 5-on-5 flag games.

But Freking knew she’d take the new sport seriously, like any of her others.

“Her leadership alone,” Delamarter remarked. “We knew, all right, if she was taking it serious, all the girls around her were going to take it serious.”

On June 1, Anoka had to play two more games to make it to the state tournament. They ran into 8-1 Melrose in their section championship and struggled to break away from the 14-14 deadlock.

Until Freking locked in. “You’ve got to reset,” Delamarter told her, and Freking — who finished the regular season averaging 8.5 yards per pass and added 167 rushing yards — did, leading Anoka to a 32-14 win.

Freking has a younger sister entering high school, and she’s already volunteering to throw the football with her if she’s interested in joining the team next year. “Send it. Just do it,” Freking said, when asked her advice about trying something new.

“It’s flag football,” Freking said. “It’s totally a girls thing.”