Photo © Shelly Bychowski | Dreamstime.com
High school girls’ basketball participation may have dropped 20% since 2000, but that doesn’t mean young female athletes aren’t playing other sports.
Like flag football.
More than 30 states are offering girls’ high school flag football programs, with at least 17 officially sanctioning state championships, according to NFL FLAG. And now, thanks to $1 million grant from Under Armour and The DICK’s Sporting Goods Foundation, more girls than ever will have an opportunity to play the sport.
The Click Clack: Next Era Grant will be delivered by Beyond Sport and “takes a powerful step forward to remove barriers and open doors to the sport by providing critical financial resources, top-tier equipment and apparel, and access to high-quality coach education through Positive Coaching Alliance,” according to a joint announcement from Under Armour and the foundation.
The grant is expected to help support out-of-school-time organizations, as well as assist state associations and school districts in moving closer to sanctioning girls’ flag football as an official high school sport.
“[The grant] reflects our belief in the power of women’s and girls’ sports and our commitment to creating safe, welcoming environments where young athletes feel they belong,” said Flynn Burch, Under Armour’s director of Global Community Impact and UA Next. “By removing barriers, we’re helping more girls compete, build community and grow their confidence.”
During Super Bowl Week earlier this month, the NFL hosted for the second straight year a showcase featuring 32 high school seniors competing in a flag football matchup.
The next day, the league promoted the sport during the second annual Toyota Glow Up Classic — a glow-in-the-dark girls’ flag football game featuring some of the San Francisco Bay area’s top high school players.
The Associated Press reported that two-time Super Bowl champion Eli Manning and Kylie Kelce, wife of Jason Kelce, served as referees for the game, while NFLers Brock Purdy, Jodan Love, Puka Nacua, Michael Pittman and Kyle Hamilton were coaches.
On another day that week, the Special Olympics Flag Football team participated in a flag football clinic hosted by All-Pro fullback Kyle Juszczyk.
“Girls’ participation is booming — between the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 school years, 25,000 more girls signed up for high school flag football and it was offered in nearly 1,000 more schools — in a trend that’s garnering significant coverage and celebration,” according to CNN.com.
“I don’t think anyone assumed it would grow this quickly,” California Interscholastic Federation executive director Ron Nocetti told SFGate.com, referring to the girls’ game and citing the incomparable role NFL FLAG has played in its fast rise. “Anytime you can have a professional sports governing body look at assisting with promoting a new sport or continuing a sport, I think it is only helpful to us. We’re very appreciative of everything they’ve done to advance the sport.”
Also helping advance the sport have been major advances at the collegiate level. The NCAA Emerging Sports for Women program added flag football last month (along with acrobatics and tumbling, and stunt).
The sport must now reach a minimum of 40 schools playing at the varsity level and meeting minimum contest and participation requirements to be considered for NCAA championship status.
Flag football’s immediate addition to the program means schools sponsoring the sport in the 2026 spring season can count toward the 40-school threshold required to establish a National Collegiate Championship if they meet minimum requirements, according to the NCAA.
As of summer 2025, NCAA sports sponsorship data showed that at least 40 NCAA schools planned to sponsor flag football at the varsity level in the 2025-26 academic year. Additional tracking from sport leaders anticipates as many as 60 schools could participate in spring 2026.
Meanwhile, NIRSA (which oversees campus recreation at the collegiate level) hosts its own annual National Flag Football Championships featuring club teams in four divisions from across the country, plus qualified student officials from different colleges and universities.
The 2025 event was held in January at Rice University in partnership with the Houston Texans. NIRSA also plans to launch a women’s collegiate flag football league later this year.
A big feeder into these college programs are the high school graduates who are actively seeking colleges and universities that offer flag football programs. (The quick rise in high school programs has spurred the NFHS to refine some of its rules and to add another field size.)
About the only bit of bad news for the sport came in the male sector of the sport; there were dismal TV ratings for the 2026 Pro Bowl Games — primarily consisting of skills competitions and a non-contact 7-on-7 flag football matchup featuring NFL players.
Held prior to Super Bowl LX at the Moscone Center in San Francisco on Feb. 1, the Tuesday event was telecast on ESPN and attracted an average of just 2.0 million viewers. According to Yahoo.com, that’s a 59.% drop from last year’s record low of 4.7 million viewers.
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