Taylor Booth rewrites records, leads Gainesville Sun girls flag football team

Taylor Booth finished the season as the Gainesville Sun Girls Flag Football Player of the Year after a Buchholz run that produced 2,040 receiving yards and 23 interceptions. MaxPreps listed her receiving total as the No. 1 mark in the country, and the Sun’s All-Area girls flag football team put her at the center of a 14-player group from seven area schools, with Buchholz leading the way with five selections.

Booth’s biggest games showed how far the area’s top players have pushed the sport. She caught eight passes for 300 yards and four touchdowns in a 39-0 win over North Marion, then flipped the game again on defense with four interceptions in a 60-0 rout of Newberry. That kind of two-way production made her more than a deep threat and more than a headline receiver, especially as she kept pairing explosive offense with ball-hawking defense. First-team honors also went to quarterback Isabella Alexander, whose passing helped fuel Booth’s numbers and made Buchholz difficult to defend for four quarters.

The numbers around Buchholz made the season look even less like a one-player spike. On April 1, the program was 9-0 under first-year coach Joe Tillman, with Alexander past 2,200 passing yards, 29 touchdowns and four interceptions. Booth had already logged 1,460 receiving yards, 61 catches, 21 receiving touchdowns and 11 interceptions on defense through eight games, while younger defenders Sylvana Jarquin and Alessia Torres helped stabilize the back end. A March 6 Gainesville Sun poll that drew 15 nominees for the area’s best girls flag football player showed how crowded the local race had become.

Booth also carried a different kind of workload in basketball, where she averaged 15.6 points per game and helped Buchholz reach the postseason. That versatility matters now because she is headed to Florida Gateway College, one of the few schools with a collegiate women’s flag football program. Florida Gateway College has won three straight NJCAA championships, and two of its flag football players were invited to 2026 U.S. National Team Trials, a backdrop that gives Booth a real college pathway and a clearer national stage than the sport offered only a few years ago.