More San Diego girls are playing flag football as pro league assembles
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
A Mira Mesa High School girls flag football team takes the field. Photo: Courtesy of coach D'Jay Scott
The number of high school girls' flag football teams playing in San Diego has nearly doubled since 2023, when the varsity sport became official in California.
- And local girls could soon have a shot at going pro in an NFL-sponsored league.
The big picture: Women are increasingly joining the typically male-dominated sport as leagues are expanding at the high school, collegiate and professional levels across the country.
- The momentum is building ahead of the sport's debut at the LA 2028 Olympics.
Zoom in: Girls have shown up in force at high school tryouts over the past two years, and demand and skill level has increased as teams navigate rule changes and chase their schools' first championships.
State of play: At least 65 NCAA schools, including San Diego State University, sponsor club or varsity teams, and that's expected to grow as the NCAA named flag football an emerging women's sport this year.
- Teams are also popping up at San Diego community colleges, and other schools are already competing in independent collegiate leagues, including the NAIA and NJCAA.
- At the high school level, California is one of 17 states with sanctioned girls' varsity flag championships, and 22 are running pilot programs.
"Young women are now seeing there's a pathway to get a scholarship, to get paid playing this sport and to hopefully be able to make it on an Olympic team," San Diego youth and high school coach D'Jay Scott previously told Axios.
Driving the news: The NFL announced this week its launching a men's and women's flag football league backed by all 32 teams, TMRW Sports and investors, including retired pro athletes like San Diego's own Alex Morgan.
- The league's structure, rules, style of play and launch date are still in the works, but more details will be released over the next couple of years, ESPN reported.
- The goal is to build a place "where these kids can aspire to go play and where the athletes who will compete in the Olympics every four years can earn a living and do it in the sport that they grew up chasing," TMRW Sports founder and CEO Mike McCarley told ESPN.
The intrigue: A new professional women's flag football league was set to launch in San Diego and other Southern California cities this year, but founder and investor Roy Englebrecht paused his plans following the NFL news.
- A "giant like the NFL" planting a flag in this space is "not a failure of vision; it's proof that our instincts were dead-on," he said via email.
💠Kate's thought bubble: I grew up running circles around the boys in my elementary school flag football league and would've loved to continue playing into high school and maybe college.
- Based on the shockingly competitive annual Powder Puff games in high school, other soccer and lacrosse players would've joined the flag football team too.