CIF gives green light to girls flag football
For more than 100 years, high school football in California has been played almost exclusively by boys. Starting as early as next school year, girls will have their own version of the sport to play.
Girls flag football was officially sanctioned as a California high school sport on Friday, crossing the goal line when the state's athletic governing body approved the proposal by a vote of 146-0.
Rather than join the tackle football team — usually as a kicker — girls will now have the option to play in their own high school program. Flag football players don't wear pads or helmets, and there is no tackling and limited contact. Pulling a flag attached to a ball carrier's waist means the play is over.
For Bay Area parents such as Jason Klein, the California Interscholastic Federation's unanimous vote couldn't have come at a better time. Klein coaches his daughter's middle school flag team in San Mateo County.
“It's the national pastime,” Klein said about the sport he fell in love with growing up in western Pennsylvania. “We shouldn't deny our daughters from that.”
Club flag football has been offered at youth levels for years but mainly as a co-ed sport. Sommer McCann's daughter, Billie, began playing in kindergarten for the Next Level program founded by Serra High football coach Patrick Walsh.
Two years ago, Billie “retired” from the co-ed league while in fifth grade to concentrate on club soccer. Thursday, she told her mother that she will unretire if flag football is offered when she reaches San Mateo's Hillsdale High.
“She just loved it,” McCann said. “Each year she'd say she was going to retire, and then she'd come out of retirement. It was hard because she was pretty much the only girl out of hundreds of boys on the field. She'd get nervous about starting each year.
“Then when she'd get out there, she'd have so much fun. She loved the competition. She was always one of the best on the team. She loved playing safety. She would play in the back, and with her soccer skills — she plays defense in soccer — no one could get by her. She would pull their flag and politely hand it back.”
While the news Friday is certainly a positive step for aspiring players, don't expect many sign-up sheets just yet at Bay Area schools.
Though administrators say athletic programs could offer the sport next school year, there are infrastructure hurdles to clear to make that a reality — namely the availability of fields, coaches and game officials, as well as student interest and when the sport will fit on the calendar.
The CIF approved girls flag football as a fall sport, completing a process that began when the Southern Section presented the proposal last year.
Sections are not mandated to play the sport in the fall, administrators say.
Elsa Morin, 17, center right, leads a chant as Redondo Union High School girls try out for a flag football team on Sept. 1, 2022, in Redondo Beach.
But if they don't, their teams right away because many of would not be eligible for regional its members do not offer an and state championships outdoor sport for girls in the if the CIF adds them fall that requires a footballsized for flag football. field.
At this point, it remains NCS commissioner Pat unclear who's in. Cruickshank said this week
The North Coast Section, that there is quite a bit of interest which extends from the East in his section, noting Bay to the coastal side of the that schools have called his Oregon border, has a clear office asking about it. path for its schools to start “It feels like this is going
to go and probably pretty quickly,” he said. “I won't even begin to predict how many teams. But I would think we could have a significant amount of teams in the first year to get started, and I think it would just go from there. There's an excitement about it that I don't think I have seen with any other new sport.”
There is interest in the neighboring Central Coast Section, too, but also more challenges.
About three dozen of its schools, including many from the section's most successful athletic programs, offer field hockey for girls in the fall.
“I don't have a very good feel right now on who would or wouldn't offer the sport,” said CCS commissioner Dave Grissom, who presides over an area stretching from King City to San Francisco. “But that doesn't mean we couldn't offer it.”