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Tag: girls sports

  • ‘Seeing the need’: Loudoun County adds girls flag football rec league – WTOP News

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    The Loudoun County Department of Parks, Recreation and Community Services is organizing its first girls’ flag football league this spring with a middle school and high school division.

    Young girls in Loudoun County, Virginia, interested in playing flag football will have a chance to do so in their own backyard.

    The Loudoun County Department of Parks, Recreation and Community Services is organizing its first girls’ flag football league this spring. It will have a middle school and high school division.

    Sharon Moseley, the department’s youth sports program coordinator, told WTOP that girls of all ages are interested in the sport, and the league will make it more accessible to players in the county.

    “It was just a matter of seeing the need and trying to meet it,” Moseley said.

    The department will partner with Michael Rivera, who founded the Virginia Hurricanes girls’ flag football program and is currently the head coach of Marymount University’s women’s flag football team. Moseley said he brings the knowledge and passion for the sport, which makes it a great partnership.

    “We want to give them the opportunity to play at a competitive level, to be able to just continue playing a game that they love and are learning, but also to improve at that game so they can have successful high school careers,” Rivera said.

    Season runs for 6 weeks

    Preseason practices would begin in March, with the season starting on April 12. The spring season will run over six Sundays, culminating with the final slate of games on June 7. All the games will take place on the turf field at Loudoun County High School in Leesburg, allowing multiple games to be played at the same time, Rivera said.

    Families can register their child on the PRCS Connect page dedicated to flag football through March 1.

    Players are required to register individually but will be asked questions during the process about which team they want to play for. The league will also be open to out-of-county residents.

    While officials have been encouraging high school teams to register to play, Rivera said players of all skill levels are welcome to join and will be placed on a team to match their skill level.

    A combination of volunteers and experienced coaches will assist during the first season. Moseley hopes that high school players entering the league will motivate their coaches to also participate in the future.

    The addition of the flag football league comes as the sport continues to grow. Last September, 12 of the 13 high schools in Prince William County fielded girls flag football teams, four of which opened the inaugural season at the Washington Commanders training facility. Girls’ flag football also became a varsity sport in neighboring Maryland.

    Flag football to premiere at Olympics

    According to the National Federation of State High School Associations, the number of girls playing the game in high schools has more than doubled, with 42,955 girls participating in the 2023-24 season. Its increased popularity comes as a new collegiate flag football conference is set to begin in the spring, and the sport will debut at the 2028 Summer Olympics.

    Rivera, who’s been involved in the sport for over a decade, said that once girls try it, they are instantly hooked.

    “I have so many players who have just come out and just by trying it, realize how much they love it, and it clicks very, very quickly,” Rivera said. “So, we’re trying to make it accessible to as many girls as possible.”

    It costs $175 per player to join the league, with players receiving an NFL Flag Football jersey and a flag football belt. Players will be required to bring their own mouth guard and wear shorts or pants with no pockets as part of their uniform, Moseley said.

    Officials say the inclusion of middle school players will be a starting point in getting younger girls involved in the sport. Moseley added that eventually, the league will include elementary school children as well.

    “The younger we can start them and get them interested and get the skills and confidence, then they’re just going to thrive even more as they get older,” she said.

    Moseley said once the sport becomes an official varsity high school sport in Virginia, Loudoun County’s rec league will become a place for players to get “supplemental training.”

    While all skill levels are welcome, Rivera said players should expect a competitive environment on the gridiron in the spring.

    “We want to make sure we make meaningful athletic opportunities for these girls and just make sure that we are keeping pace with everybody else,” Moseley said. “We don’t want them falling behind because the opportunity isn’t there.”

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    Jose Umana

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  • As girls flag football continues to grow, Chicago Bears look to middle schoolers

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    Grand Crossing resident Fallan White, 15, is doing what she can now to make a name for herself.

    Not even old enough to drive, the wide receiver for Butler College Prep’s flag football team will graduate in 2028 — the same year flag football will make its Olympic debut at the Summer Games in Los Angeles — and she’s making sure she’s ready.

    “It’s better to start off early than wait,” she said.

    White was one of more than a dozen players from Butler in Lake Forest on Aug. 14 to partake in the festivities that surround Chicago Bears training camp. The event was among a handful this summer that brought five high schools with girls flag football teams to camp, including Simeon, Harvard, Homewood-Flossmoor and Carver Military Academy. The athletes met players, coaches and Bears President/CEO Kevin Warren, who donated cleats to each team.

    The visits occurred right before the flag football season started, reflecting the Bears’ continued commitment to creating pathways for girls in football. Gustavo Silva, Bears manager of youth football and community programs, said roughly 200 schools will have girls flag football this year.He said Illinois is in the top five or six states for girls flag football participation. And to think the sport started with just 22 teams in Chicago Public Schools in 2021.

    “Whether it’s playing for their rec league, park district, a Boys and Girls Club, a youth organization, for them to have a pathway … the goal is to make the game as inclusive and accessible as possible, to create different entry points so that anyone interested in playing the game, boy, girl, different abilities, can all have access to the game,” Silva said.

    Angel Brooks, head coach of Butler’s flag team, has been involved with the sport for years, playing on Sundays for the Absolute Athletics league. Now the physical education teacher at Catherine Cook School is building out the high school team, many of whom are underclassmen playing varsity. In their second season, Brooks hopes to get enough athletes on the Lynx team to generate a JV team. She said the team’s 2024 win in one of the CPS Bowl championship games (the CPS Hardwork Bowl) is helping with recruitment.

    “It’s (flag football) always been intriguing to me,” she said. “Being able to coach, it’s even more fun because it’s pleasing to see when the girls learn and start to understand the sport. It’s a sport that gives them their own lane and their own opportunities, and they enjoy it.”

    Chicago Bears host Butler College Prep’s girls flag football team at Halas Hall on Aug. 14, 2025. (Chicago Bears)

    The Lynx’s season starts Tuesday, and quarterback Nevaeh Beasley, 17, a senior, already has her sights on garnering flag football scholarships to pursue a degree in sports medicine.

    “I’ve loved sports ever since I was little, so it has to be something with sports,” she said. Her advice for those curious about flag football: “Work hard and be dedicated, because this game could take you a long way, since it’s just starting out.”

    Silva said Illinois was the ninth state in the nation to sanction flag football for girls in 2024; Ohio just got sanctioned, making the total 17. Now that Illinois colleges are building programs for girls flag (the Bears will host a college tournament for Illinois schools in March), Silva is looking forward to making more milestones in the field — from growing girls flag football to 300 high schools to strengthening the flag football pipeline, and getting girls flag sanctioned for the middle school population.

    “With the Olympics in 2028, we’d love to see girls from Illinois and Chicago participate,” Silva said. “We have international leagues that we started — three in the UK and two in Spain that are going to start this fall. We want to see representation from our Chicago market.”

    “We are working with middle schools starting a pilot league in Rockford this fall. … We want to use the same model that we did with the high school programs. The middle school level will feed the high school programs, which will feed the collegiate programs, and those collegiate and high school programs will feed the international programming. We’re trying to create a pathway from youth all the way through adulthood.”

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    Darcel Rockett

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