When he first started Go Girl Flag Football, longtime Rosemount football coach Jeff Erdmann was simply trying to grow the sport at a grassroots level.

Not in his wildest dreams did he imagine that summer league would result in the Rosemount girls flag football team getting to represent Minnesota on the national stage.

That’s the reality for Rosemount this week as it will compete at the NFL Flag Football Championships in Canton, Ohio. The competition will take place from Thursday to Sunday with coverage on ESPN.

“There are going to be some great teams here,” Erdmann said. “We’re excited to see how we do against them.”

It’s fitting that Rosemount will be the representative from Minnesota considering it was a part of a pilot program put on by the Vikings last year that also featured Minnesota teams La Crescent-Hokah, Pine Island and Houston.

The smashing success of that pilot program paved the way for more than 50 teams to compete this year, with Mahtomedi defeating La Crescent-Hokah to win the state championship last month at TCO Stadium.

“Honestly, seeing the growth of the sport at such an exponential level has been more than we could’ve hoped for,” said Emily Weinberg, coordinator of youth and high school football for the Vikings. “It’s been really inspiring to see how much passion there is for it across the state. I can’t even predict what next year is going to look like. We’re so excited about where we’re at, and where we’ll continue to go.”

It’s a good bet Rosemount will be smack dab in the middle of the conversation as the sport continues to make strides in Minnesota. The group earned the opportunity to compete at the NFL Flag Football Championships by winning the Vikings Regional Tournament in Blaine on May 10.

“That was a great experience for us,” Erdmann said. “We lost our first game, and it was fun to see how we responded to that. We knew we were the underdogs, and we ended up coming back and beating the No. 2 seed and the No. 1 seed to get here. Those are the moments that they are going to remember forever.”

As she reflected on her journey through the sport, Rosemount quarterback Talia Vescio brought up how it all started back in middle school when she decided to sign up for the Go Girl Flag Football. Now she and her teammates are preparing to step into the spotlight.

“We’re ecstatic,” Vescio said. “This is probably the most excited I’ve ever been for something. It’s unbelievable to me how much growth there’s been in such a short amount of time. We’re glad we get to be a part of it.”

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By REBECCA SANTANA, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Travelers giddy about being able to keep their shoes on while walking through TSA checkpoints at the airport again may have something else to look forward to: changes to how much liquid they can carry.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Wednesday during a conference hosted by “The Hill” that she is questioning “everything TSA does” and spoke of possible changes to the amount of liquids travelers can tote in their carry-on baggage.

“The liquids, I’m questioning. So that may be the next big announcement is what size your liquids need to be,” Noem said. “We have put in place in TSA a multilayered screening process that allows us to change some of how we do security and screening so it’s still as safe.”

She gave no details about precisely what those changes might be or how quickly travelers could expect to see them.

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Under the Transportation and Security Administration’s current guidance, travelers can carry liquids in travel-sized containers 3.4 ounces or less per item in their carry-on bag. Those containers must be placed in a one-quart resealable plastic bag. Bigger containers must go in checked baggage, though there are exceptions for medications and baby formula.

Noem announced on July 8 that travelers were no longer required to take their shoes off while going through screening after a pilot program showed TSA had the equipment needed to keep airports and aircraft safe while allowing people to keep their shoes on.

That policy had been in place since 2006, several years after “shoe bomber” Richard Reid’s failed attempt to take down a flight from Paris to Miami in late 2001.

The limits on liquids were triggered by a 2006 incident where authorities foiled a plot to used liquid explosives smuggled aboard carry-on luggage to blow up planes.

Noem also laid out her vision for the future of airport travel during the talk Wednesday.

“Hopefully, the future of an airport, where I’m looking to go is that you walk in the door with your carry-on suitcase, you walk through a scanner and go right to your plane,” Noem said. “It takes you one minute.”

By MIKE SCHNEIDER, Associated Press

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Backstreet Boys singer Brian Littrell says a local Florida sheriff’s office isn’t doing enough to protect his multimillion-dollar beachfront property from trespassers and is asking a judge for an order commanding deputies to do so.

The petition filed last month by Littrell’s company in a Florida Panhandle county touches on a perennial tug-of-war between usually-wealthy oceanfront property owners and beach-loving members of the public, especially in Florida, which has 825 miles of sandy beaches.

Under Florida law, any sand on a beach below the high tide water mark is public. Many homeowners own the sand down to the average high-water line, though some counties over the decades have passed local ordinances that let the public use otherwise private beaches for sunbathing, fishing and walking if people have historically had access for those purposes.

Property records show that Littrell’s company purchased the property in Santa Rosa Beach in Walton County in 2023 for $3.8 million.

A spokeswoman for the Walton County Sheriff’s Office said Wednesday that the office doesn’t comment on pending litigation.

“The Walton County Sheriff’s Office prides itself on handling every situation, call for service, or interaction with professionalism using a customer service approach,” public information officer Lindsey Darby said in an email. “This has always been our philosophy and will remain so moving forward.”

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In the petition, Littrell’s company said that chairs, umbrellas and small tables had been put out on the beach, as well as “No Trespassing” signs, to mark it as private property. But that effort had been in vain “as numerous trespassers have set out to antagonize, bully, and harass the Littrell family by regularly, every day, trespassing,” according to the petition.

The sheriff’s office has refused requests to remove trespassers or charge them, and the family has had to hire private security, the petition said.

Walton County, which has become home to several famous property owners besides Littrell over the past two decades, has been at the center of a recent fight between private property owners and the public over access to beaches.

A 2018 Florida law that stemmed from a Walton County ordinance blocked any local government from passing ordinances dealing with public beach access until affected homeowners were notified, a public hearing was held and a court had determined whether a private beach was historically open to the public.

Florida lawmakers this year approved legislation that restored control back to local authorities, and Gov. Ron DeSantis signed it into law last month in Santa Rosa Beach, the beach town where Littrell’s house is located.

Follow Mike Schneider on the social platform Bluesky: @mikeysid.bsky.social.

By MARGERY A. BECK, Associated Press

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Nebraska is suing Colorado over the amount of water it draws from the South Platte River, the latest in a long history of water rights disputes between the states that have been left increasingly dry by climate change.

Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen and state Attorney General Mike Hilgers held a news conference Wednesday to announce the lawsuit, which was filed with the U.S. Supreme Court.

“It’s crystal clear. Colorado has been holding water back from Nebraska for almost 100 years and getting more and more egregious every single day,” Pillen said, pointing to Colorado’s rapidly expanding population over the past decade.

“So today it’s really, really simple: We’re here to put our gloves on,” Pillen said. “We’re going to fight like heck. We’re going to get every drop of water.”

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser called the lawsuit “unfortunate” in a written statement and said Nebraska officials failed “to look for reasonable solutions.”

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The lawsuit accuses Colorado of depriving Nebraska of as much as 1.3 million acre-feet of water from the river over several years that Nebraska is entitled to under a 1923 compact between the states. The suit also accuses Colorado officials of blocking Nebraska’s effort to construct a massive canal — often called the Perkins County Canal — and reservoir project that would see Nebraska seize land in Colorado to divert water into Nebraska, which is also allowed under the compact.

Nebraska needs the water not only for agriculture production in its southwestern region — which climate experts predict will grow hotter and drier in the coming decades — but also to feed water supplies in the eastern part of the state, officials said. Nebraska’s capital, Lincoln, is expected to get 12% of its water from the proposed canal, Pillen said.

The compact entitles Nebraska to 120 cubic feet per second from the river during the irrigation season between April 1 and Oct. 15 each year, and 500 cubic feet per second during the non-irrigation fall and winter months. Hilgers said Colorado has been shortchanging Nebraska during the irrigation season, allowing only about 75 cubic feet per second of water daily into Nebraska this summer.

“I think this may be the most consequential lawsuit that this office will be a part of in my generation,” Hilgers said. “It is almost impossible to overstate the importance of the South Platte River to the future of the state of Nebraska.”

The South Platte, which flows through northeastern Colorado into southwestern Nebraska, has been at the center of a tempest brewing between the two states going back to 2022, when Nebraska announced it would build the canal.

Since then, officials from the two states have been haggling over how to carry out both the terms of the compact and land acquisition to build the canal.

“It became clear, despite the very professional and intentional scope of those negotiations, that we were at an impasse,” Hilgers said.

Weiser countered that Nebraska officials should have remained at the negotiating table.

“Nebraska’s actions will force Colorado water users to build additional new projects to lessen the impact of the proposed Perkins County Canal,” he said. “When the dust finally settles, likely over a billion dollars will have been spent — tens of millions of that on litigation alone — and no one in Nebraska or Colorado will be better off.”

Hilgers said the lawsuit was filed directly with the Supreme Court because it handles disputes between states. The process “isn’t fast,” Hilgers warned.

“We’ll probably have a special master appointed within the next 12 months, and under normal litigation timelines, that’s maybe 3 to 5 years before we get a result,” he said.

That does not mean work on the canal will stop, he said, as he expects work on permitting and design of the canal to continue.

Nebraska has been at the center of interstate water disputes for decades. In 2002, Nebraska, Colorado and Kansas reached a settlement over Republican River water allocation after years of legal wrangling. But disputes continued, and new agreements were reached among the states again in 2014.

Water disputes could become more common as climate change worsens shortages, said Dr. Carly Phillips, a research scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists — a nonprofit that advocates for climate change solutions.

Warmer temperatures affect multiple parts of the hydrological cycle, Phillips said. It is decreasing the snowpack, which is the main way water is stored in the western U.S. Higher temperatures also mean the snow melts earlier each year, changing the availability of stream flow. And states like Nebraska might see increased irrigation demand when it’s hotter.

“These patterns are all in the same direction across the board,” Phillips said. “The trends are really consistent when it comes to snowpack, stream flow, evaporation and irrigation demand.”

Associated Press reporter Sarah Raza contributed from Sioux Falls, South Dakota.