Flag football scores big for girls in Iowa and beyond
NFL efforts help build interest in a sport that is growing at the youth, high school and college levels
For girls and women who like to play football, there’s always been one, well, big problem with joining their high school or college teams and it’s far more basic than discrimination or just not feeling welcome.
Keonni Langford experienced it when she played for Des Moines Roosevelt her freshman year as a defensive back.
“They start getting bigger,” she said of the boys on the team. “They start bulking up.”
A year earlier, another Roosevelt girl experienced the same thing playing safety and defensive back as a freshman.
“As time went on, everybody else got bigger and I was getting hurt more easily,” said Dominique Harris, a Roosevelt senior. “It had nothing to do with me being weak or scared because I went out and played my hardest. I was a good 110 pounds and these guys were 180, 200 pounds falling on top of me.”
Now Langford and Harris, like other girls in the Des Moines school district and throughout the U.S., are getting the chance to play football against each other instead of getting crushed by guys twice their size.
Flag football is on the rise at the high school and college levels throughout the country, and this spring saw the debut of a league sponsored by the Des Moines district for middle school and high school girls. It’s not sanctioned by the Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union but it’s supported by the district and has brought more than 200 girls together to play at Mediacom Stadium this spring.
The Des Moines Public Schools Girls Flag Football League play will culminate on Sunday with a championship tournament, also at Mediacom Stadium.
“We feel more comfortable playing against each other and not big, hefty linebackers,” said Langford, a Roosevelt junior who is also on the school’s girls’ basketball team.
Part of the big push for flag football throughout the country is coming from a seemingly unlikely source – the National Football League, which has a flag football initiative for girls and boys called NFL Flag.
Sure, it’s a giant commercial for the game of football but for girls and women who love football, it’s a far less patronizing approach than thinking all women want is a pink, bedazzled jersey of their favorite team. Turns out, they actually like the game itself.
And at Mediacom Stadium this spring, it’s likely the 230 girls all over the field weren’t paying much attention to the source of their league’s support, just that they got the chance to play.
“It’s great to see the kids make plays, jump in the air and come down with the ball,” said Jacob Burke, community education manager for Des Moines Public Schools. “It’s very similar [to regular football] but you just avoid the contact.”
All four Des Moines high schools have a team in the league, as well as Dowling Catholic. Eight of the 10 middle schools have a team, some with two. In all, 70 high school girls signed up to play, 160 middle schoolers
Last year some middle schools had programs and interest was already clear. Harding Middle School had 40 girls show up to play.
That means the players on the field this year have a mix of experience, Burke said. Some have never played before while some played with boys in leagues when they were younger. Some tried out for their school’s boys’ teams and some began last year in middle school. Burke saw some of that experience in play when he helped North’s high school team early in the season.
“I was very happily surprised when I told a girl to run a two-step slant during a route and she did it very well,” he said. “She said, ‘Yeah, I went to Harding last year and we played.’”
The DMPS league was funded by a grant from the Minnesota Vikings. Cedar Rapids also has a Vikings-affiliated organization, the NFL Iowa Females in Flag and other teams and clubs are active in the state. Throughout the NFL, teams are organizing boys’ and girls’ flag football teams in their states and regions.
A three-year grant from NFL Flag helped launch the Des Moines program. It received $25,000 the first year, it will receive half that next year and half that again the following year. Then the schools and district will be on their own to decide what comes next.
“There’s a difference between a club doing well and a school district to take on the expenses of coaching stipends and travel costs and all that stuff,” Burke said. “You really have to prove it and that’s what [girls’] wrestling was finally able to do. It took a long time.”
At this point, there is no plan to add flag football to the available sanctioned girls’ sports in the state. There is interest and there has been discussion with member schools, Iowa High School Girls Athletic Union Executive Director Erin Gerlach told the Cedar Rapids Gazette.
“While a handful of schools showed interest or had already started a club, the overwhelming majority said they were not interested in supporting a high school program at this time,” Gerlach said.
Gerlach added that the lukewarm interest in launching a varsity program was in part due to girls’ wrestling, which the girls’ union just sanctioned in 2022 and is a new and growing sport at schools. She said 50 member schools must commit and plan to start a varsity program before the girls’ union sanctions any new sport.
“We are happy to connect programs looking for competition or opportunities,” Gerlach added, “but at this time we’ll let flag football grow organically on its own with the communities.”
The National Federation of State High School Associations reports that 12 states have sanctioned girls’ flag football, with another 19 states running pilot programs (including Minnesota and Wisconsin). The organization is working on formalizing national rules that will be released this spring.
“It’s been in the media and it’s been promoted,” Burke said. “When I was at Hoover [as athletic director], I had girls come up to me and say they were interested in flag football and could we put something together. We never got it off the ground, but we knew there was some interest.”
The girls like the sport for a variety of reasons, they say. It’s aggressive without being too aggressive, Langford and Harris say, and they get to play with other girls from their school that they didn’t know well before.
“I love how we just get to have fun,” Harris said. “The coach reminds us just to have fun.”
Flag football’s growth isn’t just at high schools. Fifty colleges and universities offer it as a varsity sport; as with women’s wrestling, it is NAIA and non-scholarship NCAA Division III schools leading the way.
In Iowa, Graceland University in Lamoni launched its program in early 2024. The Yellowjackets had a 13-9 record this spring. Graceland sports compete in the NAIA.
In Minnesota, with financial support from the NFL’s Vikings, a new women’s flag football conference launched this spring. The Collegiate Women’s Flag Football League was comprised of seven NCAA Division III teams, primarily from Minnesota. Another conference, the Atlantic East, became the first NCAA conference to offer women’s flag football when it announced it was sanctioning the sport for its Division III schools in February.
Also in February, the NCAA recommended flag football for its Emerging Sports for Women program.
Interest could blossom even further when flag football – for men and women – makes its Olympic debut in Los Angeles in 2028.
It’s an attractive sport for schools and clubs to consider because it doesn’t require much equipment – uniforms and flags, mostly – and facilities are already in place.
“There aren’t a lot of costs involved,” Burke said. “You’re not buying pads like you are for a full football uniform, the fields are often on turf fields that are already lined for football. There would be travel costs and minimal uniform costs.”
The Des Moines league plays mostly with rules set by NFL Flag, including:
· Teams of 7 vs. 7 or 5 vs. 5.
· A shortened, 40-yard playing field.
· No diving for a first down.
· A team 5 yards from the end zone must pass, not run it in for a touchdown.
· No fumble recoveries; the play just ends.
· Quarterback has 7 seconds to throw the ball.
· Players wear two flags but only one needs to be pulled off to end the play.
“They try to minimize the contact and just make it about play-calling, running and catching,” Burke said.
The NFL grant helped pay the costs to pay some coaches, as well as officials. The officials have been members of the Grand View men’s football team that won the NAIA championship last fall. Among the officials working the game has been Jackson Waring, Grand View’s quarterback who was the NAIA’s national player of the year.
Because the girls are still learning, their coaches are in the huddle. Burke assumes that will evolve to armbands with plays on them or players bringing in plays from the sideline, as in most football games.
While the future of the sport is unfolding like the plays the girls are learning in the Des Moines league, what’s more certain is the joy the opportunity has brought to those who got to be on a team.
“This is my last year, my last month. I’m really glad I got the chance to play,” said Harris, who will graduate soon. “I never found a sport I really loved besides gymnastics but since I started playing football, I’ve been really happy.”
The DMPS Girls Flag Football League championship games are Sunday afternoon at Mediacom Stadium. Games are shorter than regulation football, and there will be quarterfinals, semifinals and a final. Middle school play starts at 1 p.m. with the championship game at 3 p.m.; high schools start at 2 p.m. with the championship game at 4 p.m.
Jane Burns is a former sports and features writer for the Des Moines Register, as well as other publications and websites. She’s a past winner of the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association’s Mel Greenberg Award for her coverage of women’s basketball. Over the course of her career she’s covered pretty much everything, which is why her as-yet-to-be-written memoir will be called “Cheese and Basketball: Stories From a Reporter Who Has Covered Everything.”