Women’s Flag Football: New Collegiate Sport?
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Notre Dame’s flag football team is only in its second year of being an official school sport. Notre Dame was one of the first schools in the area to start this program. In February 2023, girls’ flag football officially became a sanctioned sport in California. Only eight other states sanction this sport, but 22 have started pilot programs. According to data from the National Federation of State High School Associations, there are 913 teams across the United States this season.
The next big question is whether girl's flag football should be made into a college sport. There have been many instances where girls who want to play football play on the men’s team because there are no opportunities for them. However, one main negative about this is that the sport is still brand new, and you wouldn’t have enough to commit simultaneously.
“I do think that it should be a college sport because it is quickly growing in high schools and is a chance to empower women,” Megan Dunbar ‘25, current senior flag football captain, said. “I think flag football gives women the opportunity to play a sport that we grew up thinking was only for boys. For me, flag football is a way to break gender stereotypes.”
Right now, the country is slowly starting to have growth in girl's flag football. As a beginning step, the Atlantic East Conference has become the first National Collegiate Athletic Association conference to offer varsity female flag football with partnership from the National Football League and RCX Sports. This big anticipation for the spring of 2025 has broken down stereotypes of a primarily male sport and given girls the confidence to play something they have only seen boys play. Then, hopefully, within the next decade, we can see even more girls committing to colleges for something that has been male-dominated for so long.
