Girls’ flag football sees rapid rise with NFL backing

Football is for boys. The gridiron is no place for little girls. Try cheerleading instead.

For years, that was the message to millions of women and girls. Their favorite sport was inaccessible to them. But the explosive growth of flag football — from high school leagues to Division I colleges and a new Olympic pipeline — is changing that.

The sport’s growth has been largely spurred by a powerful partner: the NFL.

“It’s been crazy,” said Eleanor Mahshie, a 17-year-old from Arlington who has played in six consecutive national flag football tournaments hosted by the NFL. “There’s so much more support now, so much media attention with it, too.”

With the backing of the country’s dominant sports league, flag football has transitioned from a backup option to a passion for millions of athletes nationwide. That evolution will continue this weekend with a flag football showcase at the NFL Pro Bowl in Orlando, Florida.

“There’s just been so much pent-up demand from girls who haven’t had a chance to play football at a competitive level before,” said Stephanie Kwok, the NFL’s head of flag football. “So there’s been a lot of growth over the last few years.”

The Pro Bowl game itself transitioned to a flag format in 2023 after years of players opting out or providing low-effort performances to avoid injury.

But this year’s event will also spotlight players who consider flag football a passion. Thirty girls from top-ranked high school teams will square off in a game, as will international players from 13 countries.

The weekend’s showcase is only the league’s latest foray into flag. Earlier this month, the NFL announced a partnership with the historic Maxwell Football Club to select a Girls National Flag Football Player of the Year.

Each NFL franchise nominated a local player for the inaugural award, which the Maxwell Football Club will hand out at its annual ceremony in March. Mahshie was the Washington Commanders’ pick.

“It means a lot,” Mahshie, 17, said of the honor. “It’s just very nice to see everyone’s hard work pay off.”

With the support of the NFL and its franchises, more and more girls like Mahshie are flocking to flag football. Eleven states offer girls’ flag as a varsity sport at a high school level; 60 colleges have followed suit.

It’s a massive shift from where the sport was 10 years ago when Mahshie started playing. At first, there were no girls’ flag football leagues for her. Any team she was on was, by default, “co-ed,” but Mahshie was almost always the lone girl.

When she was 11 years old, there was finally enough interest to start a league for girls. But there weren’t enough players to create proper age-based divisions. Mahshie was a sixth-grader playing against high schoolers in a group for players as old as 14.

Their Northern Virginia league will field four age divisions in 2025.

“It’s overdue,” Eleanor’s father, Zak Mahshie, said of the increased recognition. “The opportunities have expanded, and it’s really great to see.”

Mike Rivera, Mahshie’s coach with the Virginia Hurricanes, first noticed a growth in girls’ flag football about five years ago, not long after the NFL began emphasizing the sport.

That’s no coincidence, he said.

“For the players to go out there and wear the jersey of an NFL team, that makes it exciting,” said Rivera, who also coaches a collegiate flag team at Marymount University. “Their backing is immense. Anytime you have a big name that’s well-known, respected and recognized like the NFL, it draws attention.”

The NFL has gone all-in on flag football. The league abandoned the old “Punt, Pass and Kick” program in 2017, shifting its focus to flag football as its low-contact alternative to traditional tackle leagues.

In the past 10 years, flag football participation has steadily grown from 5.5 million players in 2014 to 7.3 million athletes in 2023, according to Statista. Women and girls accounted for about 1.6 million of those players in 2023.

“We chalk it up to the power of football and the popularity of the NFL,” Adam Rudel, the Baltimore Ravens’ senior manager of marketing and football outreach, said of the sport’s growth. “But really, it’s just that these girls have an opportunity to play a sport that has long been for boys.”

The trend has spread throughout the country, but the District and the surrounding region have had a particularly stark rise in interest.

“The growth locally has been something that we weren’t necessarily anticipating,” Rudel said. “With the power of football, we know it’s popular; we know there’s a lot of fandom, but the girls have really taken to it, and it’s created a whole new realm of student-athletes.”

There are more opportunities awaiting players like Eleanor now. At the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, flag football will occupy the world’s largest international stage for the first time.

Several NFL players have already shown interest in the event, but the women’s team is wide open.

“With the Olympics, there’s now a real pathway in flag football,” the NFL’s Kwok said. “Previously, you could play recreationally as a kid. If you’re making a decision about what sport to play, you want to have that elite level that you can aspire to.”

For girls like Eleanor Mahshie and her teammates, flag football was typically a second sport, played in the offseason of basketball or softball.

That’s changing.

“Sometimes I wish I started a little later where I could be going to a Division I college for it,” Mahshie joked.

She said she’ll continue playing flag football in college and would love to make the Olympic roster. But competition for those spots is only getting tougher as a generation of girls barely younger than her embraces flag football.

“Flag football has become a primary sport for a lot of girls because now they see a pipeline in being able to play in college and then, who doesn’t want to be on the Olympic team?” Rivera said. “Now there’s a future that they can see.”