
The founder of the Philadelphia Youth Football Academy, Eugene Pogh (Purple shirt), standing by a group of his players that he mentors and coaches. (Zamani Feelings)
From building player skill sets to preparing them for a life in college and beyond, the Philadelphia Youth Football Academy (PYFA) is a flag football organization based in Germantown that has steadily grown to provide young athletes with an interactive, annual cycle of activities and mentoring.
“When my son started two years ago, it was something that we’ve been looking for about a year and a half. One day, I just so happened to see their sign,” said Evonne Colley, the mother of a PYFA member. “Now, through thick and thin, we have been with them. The coaches are great, they communicate very well, and [the founder] Eugene is on top of everything and has everything in order.”
Colley’s experience enrolling her 10-year-old son, Shmairr Crabbe, depicts the even larger connection that many local families have been able to grow with the PYFA community.
“They helped [my son] have more independence, skill, talent and have even shown him how to be a mini-coach; I’m looking forward to even more experiences,” she added.
PYFA offers a variety of programs for boys and girls from ages six to 14 that center around 7-on-7 football training, teams, and summer camps, as well as off-the-field academic and career exploration.
Around this time of year, players come together for Friday training sessions to engage in strength and conditioning exercises while reviewing flag football concepts. This is a period of time when coaches prepare participants for competition against other flag football programs in the spring.
Currently, three flag football teams in PYFA travel to compete against other teams across the city. They consist of a 14U team for ages 13 and 14, a 12U with ages 10 to 12, and a 9U with ages eight to nine. The organization has recently begun to welcome children as young as six into their training and summer camps.
Earlier this year, in May, PYFA entered their flag football teams into the Philadelphia Metro Conference (PMC), a competitive 7-on-7 football league for youth. In their first year participating, the 14U team won the league’s championship after going 3-1 in the regular season and going undefeated in the playoffs. The 9U team went 2-2, and the 12U team went 3-1 and made a playoff trip.
“We’re open to inexperienced youth all the way to well-advanced,” said the founder of PYFA, Eugene Pogh. “For inexperienced kids, he or she may not always be skilled, but they could be athletic, and our coaches will get them right.”
In the fall of 2022, 22 players were enrolled in the program. Today, over 70 players are enrolled in PYFA, as well as eight coaches and mentors who help facilitate the organization’s programs.


“We have networked, done recruiting, and have flyers and banners posted up all across the Northwest Philadelphia area, [mostly] in Germantown, East Mt. Airy, Nicetown, and Wissahickon,” Pogh said. “We have a decent connection with a lot of the schools… and we recruit through email blast and social media.”
“We also reach out to social services that have youth that may need redirection,” Pogh added.
With the recent success, their teams have endured, the families they’ve been able to impact, and the additional programs they’ve been able to grow, this non-profit has established a large presence in the football community that at one point began with an uncertain journey.
The organization began as a youth mentoring program in 2017 called L.I.T Sports (Leaders in Training Sports). It met on Saturday mornings in local libraries without physical activity and focused on helping students with career workforce development. Members would research the vast career options in fields such as law enforcement and sports.
L.I.T. was able to obtain 24 youth members and would bring in different individuals who worked in law enforcement and had a sports background. After not being able to keep consistent mentors on board to help facilitate the program, Pogh started thinking of other possible approaches to reaching the youth.
The shift started in 2020 when Pogh spoke with the Seybert Foundation and generated the idea of using grant funding to revitalize the organization into an entity with flag football and mentorship components.
“There were no non-profit, standalone, OST (Out of School Time) flag football programs [in the city,” Pogh said. “In late 2020, I came up with the name Philadelphia Youth Football Academy because my eventual goal is to obtain a building that will actually become an academy.”
In 2021, PYFA began flag football programming for the community’s youth, which consisted of training, conditioning, and assembling different flag football teams by age group.
Going into 2022, Pogh knew he had to expand further through partnerships with schools and organizations to help provide young athletes with the best resources.
Their yearly model began, which keeps kids productive all year with activities that prepare them for competition in 7-on-7 leagues: training and conditioning in the fall, the same in the winter with added scrimmages and exhibition games until April, practices for league play from April to May, and then league play in May for all age groups.
They started their first summer camp program in 2022 in collaboration with the Mastery Charter School Pickett Campus. To this day, the PYFA summer camp runs from July to August and provides a variety of football skills and drills, academic enrichment, and nutritional meal information.
PYFA then partnered with Give and Go Athletics to help bring their fall programming to life at the Bache-Martin Elementary School’s fieldhouse.
When separating from Give and Go at the end of 2022, Pogh remembers searching endlessly for a place to continue holding the organization’s programs.
“After doing some scrambling around and hustling, I was able to find a recreation center in the Spring of 2023,” Pogh said. “In late March, we finally received our own 501(c)(3) and became an official non-profit organization.”
In May of that year, Pogh got the organization operating again in the Germantown area by partnering with the Waterview Recreation Center, where they began holding their summer camp.
“In the winter of 2024, Waterview closed due to unforeseen circumstances, so from there, we just held all of our programming outdoors on the field and couldn’t do anything inside,” Pogh said.
Early 2024 was a period of change that put Pogh back into search mode. He was also looking for a steady league to enter his flag football teams into. PYFA would go on to join the Philadelphia Metro Conference for the 2024 spring season, where the teams made a name for themselves in the heat of competition.
Pogh plans to most likely join a different league next year, where the six and seven-year-olds can also compete as a team, but this is still uncertain.
After the move to PMC, Pogh struck a partnership with the Morris Estate Recreation Center ahead of this past summer to continue their summer camp and other indoor programming. However, PYFA still uses Waterview’s outdoor field when needed.
“We’re still looking for access to an indoor gym for the winter so that we can be inside,” Pogh said.
Children can enroll at any time during the year and jump right into whatever program is offered at a given time.
Even with the heavy emphasis on flag football development, Pogh still values the fact that his work is also about developing the character of the city’s youth.
Another service they offer is the ‘Build Your Sports Career Program,’ where young athletes conduct research and complete projects about the different opportunities to become student-athletes in college, the careers that exist in the sports industry, and even careers outside of sports that some may be interested in.
What’s coming next for the academy will have a similar theme. As an extension of the Build Your Sports Career Program, various field trip ideas are being brainstormed with the Morris Estate Recreation Center.
“We might visit a college campus and talk to their players; hopefully, we get the chance to speak with some players so they can school our youth on what it’s like to be a student-athlete across the [Division 1] to [Division 3] levels,” Pogh said. “Then we can visit the Lincoln Financial Field and talk to some people behind the scenes to see what it’s like to work for a professional organization because not everybody is going to make it to the NFL as a player.”
PYFA might also add two more teenage flag football teams in the 15 to 18 age range and will focus on staying connected with every past player of their organization to further assist them in their life’s journey.
“If the older ones want to come back and coach, they can. For some of them, we’ve strived to help them get into school,” Pogh said. “That’s something we’re going to work on as well: an alumni component. Most of our kids haven’t graduated from high school yet, so we still have time.”
To learn more about their programs and details regarding enrollment, visit www.pyfa215.org.