No Red Flags: How flag football is taking over girls’ athletics

In the 1950s, high school PE teachers were getting into trouble for playing football in class. The sport was deemed too rough and high contact to be played in an environment with such varying skill sets and commitment levels.

As a result, a PE teacher in Maryland invented flag football, a no contact alternative to football that uses flags attached to a belt on your waist instead of tackling. The sport quickly became a weekend game for teenage girls in the 1950s, then a community sport in the 1980s, and now in 2024, it is on its way to being a high school sport everywhere from Florida to New York; Arizona to our very own Metro League.

Today, the addition of flag football to high schools gives female athletes an opportunity to participate in an athletic field that has long been viewed as male-only, despite it being in a different form.

Assistant Athletic Director to Seattle Public Schools and decorated athlete, Ms. Tara Davis explains the importance of flag football and how it can benefit students.

“This gives a new opportunity for female athletes to come out and participate in a way for the first time. I mean I have those who maybe they were swimmers, maybe they were bowlers, and now they’re playing flag football, and they didn’t realize they had that opportunity.”

Davis went on to explain that while flag football is a nontraditional sport, it is one that requires a large skillset and allows people of different backgrounds to play. She says many on her current flag football roster are former soccer and basketball players, noting that lots of the latter had played those sports since they were very young, since flag football isn’t a common offering for young girls.

Today, there are 8 states where flag football is an official high school sport. Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, and New York. The first to acknowledge it was Florida, forming clubs in the late 1990s and being officially recognized as a sport in 2002. And after years of NFL teams pushing flag football at the high school level, the first state to have a historic flag football state championship was Arizona in November 2023.

The NFL has been a pioneer in the development of high school flag football. In 2021, they partnered with Nike to grant 5 million dollars to high school flag football teams across the country. Currently, the Seahawks are offering funding to high schools interested in creating a league, creating a bond between the two sports from the start.

Hadley DeLay, a freshman on Eastside Catholic’s flag football team, agrees flag football is new enough to present fresh challenges while still maintaining the integrity of traditional American football.

“I have a lot of history with football in general” she said, explaining how seeing her family members play football transformed into a passion for flag football. “I just wanted to play a sport that was really fun for me and connected to that, and I feel like in flag football you can have every opportunity,” said DeLay.

She went on to explain the similarities between the games, highlighting that the positions are all the same, and eventually focusing on flag football’s feminist qualities.

“I feel like it’s like the new thing and girls can like have the same thing, like play and be able to play like guys have always had football.” According to Hadley, flag football’s growing popularity in the Washington area is due to both its versatility and connections with tackle football.

The Metro League, which consists of 17 private schools in the Seattle area, currently offers 16 sports to participating schools, including football, boys’ and girls’ soccer, baseball, and both fast and slow pitch softball. Less common sports, such as gymnastics, have made the cut to be considered sports by the league. Other more typical sports, such as both boys’ and girls’ lacrosse, are played by many schools but still are not considered sports by the Metro League. The Washington Interscholastic Activities Association, also known as the WIAA, are in charge of deeming a game worthy of the sport title. And while flag football is yet to recognized as an official Metro League sport, it seems not to be a question of “if” but rather “when.”

Tara Davis is confident about flag football’s future.

“Flag football is sweeping the nation, one of the fastest growing sports. Within Washington state we’re looking to make it a WIAA sport in the near future. It’s going to be similar to that of football.” DeLay also spoke to this topic, “I think it should be a WIAA sport, because I mean you’re doing all the same physical stuff as other sports, so why isn’t it?”

Flag football has emerging at the high school level in recent years because of the opportunities it brings to high school girls, even if they’ve never played before. As opposed to many high school sports, where you need to play for years to build varsity level skill, you can still find success if you start in high school.

For DeLay, it was an opportunity to channel her love for football into school athletics. For Davis, it’s an important progression for feminism in athletics.

“You have young female athletes who weren’t the soccer star or the basketball star, or maybe even the track star, yet now they’re starring in their role in flag football because it is a team sport and they’re having success.” Davis concluded. Flag football is a sport designed for the player, not the game, and is taking high schools by storm.