Flag football, a non-contact version of American football, is spreading like wildfire among US girls drawn by the prospect of its inclusion in the 2028 Olympics, its popularity even sparking plans for a professional league.<\/p>\n
“It’s the youth version of pickleball, the fastest growing adult sport,” says Michael Colt, comparing flag football to the racquet sport that’s all the rage among the over-30s. “It’s crazy.”<\/p>\n
Colt, 44, coaches the Staten Island Giants, last year’s under-18 US champions.<\/p>\n
Since he co-founded the club in 2019, its youth teams have earned a host of national titles and sent several players to the national team.<\/p>\n
Colt said it had been “a struggle” early on to gain recognition and find backing.<\/p>\n
“We fought for everything,” he said. “We were kind of always pushed to the side, like this wasn’t serious.<\/p>\n
“And I see that about the sport to this day, when you’re asking the difference in the sport. In the beginning, nobody really wanted to coach girls.”<\/p>\n
The Giants’ trajectory mirrors that of the sport as a whole. Developed as an alternative to collision prone tackle football, girls’ and women’s flag was relatively unknown six years ago.<\/p>\n
Yet particpation reached close to 270,000 girls aged six to 17 in 2024, according to the USA Football, which oversees US teams in tackle and flag football — and Colt’s Giants club has the financial backing of the NFL’s New York Giants.<\/p>\n
Even as the NFL throws its impressive weight behind the game, the scope of flag football can still come as a surprise to the uninitiated, especially the opportunity it provides for gridiron-loving girls.<\/p>\n
When 14-year-old Brielle Caetano talks about flag, which she has been playing since kindergarten, people “are very in shock”.<\/p>\n
“And (then) I tell them you can get a (university) scholarship from that,” Caetano added. “They’re definitely in shock.”<\/p>\n
“Football has always been considered a boy’s sport,” noted 16-year-old Annie Falcone of the familiar high-contact game whose pinnacle is the NFL. “But flag football has grown so much for women of all ages.”<\/p>\n
In flag football, most often played in a five-on-five format, an offensive player is “tackled” by pulling one of two “flags” worn on a belt around the hips.<\/p>\n
No blocking is allowed, further reducing the risk of injury in a game that focuses on running and throwing skills.<\/p>\n
“It’s just incredible to me how fast flag overall is growing, but really led by girls and women,” said Scott Hallenbeck, USA Football’s chief executive officer.<\/p>\n
“In my probably 30-plus years of being involved in sports, I’ve never seen a discipline of a sport scale (up) as fast as we’re seeing flag.”<\/p>\n
Hallenbeck said a lot of credit for that growth goes to the NFL, which is pushing to develop the game.<\/p>\n
That includes at the youth level, with the NFL organizing its own national flag tournament for boys and girls in July this year, with sponsors and a TV broadcasting contract.<\/p>\n
– Fandom, opportunities –<\/p>\n
While the NFL is the most-watched pro league in the United States, it has struggled to expand the game outside US borders.<\/p>\n
The NBA has become a global phenomenon, and elite basketball leagues prosper outside the USA. But tackle football has found a foothold in just a few other countries such as Germany and Mexico.<\/p>\n
Hallenbeck said flag football could be an international game-changer.<\/p>\n
“(They are) really pushing flag to help grow fandom and opportunities around the world and then obviously putting a lot of emphasis around it here in this country,” he said.<\/p>\n
Gaining inclusion at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics is a key part of that campaign, and is already having an effect.<\/p>\n
“It’s a source of motivation for me and for the girls right now,” Falcone said.<\/p>\n
The NFL is already looking beyond the Games, and is “exploring very aggressively now an opportunity to create a professional flag league for both men and women, obviously two different leagues,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said in February.<\/p>\n
“They’re trying to gather sponsors,” said Colt. “I definitely think it’s going to be a professional sport by 2032.”<\/p>\n
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