Jo Overstreet was a star-flag football player on male teams growing up in Texas, and there were times when she felt alone.
Yes, she was welcomed. regarded as merely one of the boys.
Something deeper, a sense of sisterhood, was what she yearned for.
The 40-year-old Team USA receiver believes that a vibrant community of women of all ages and skills is pushing the sport to new heights these days. With the sport’s recent addition to the Olympic schedule for the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, it’s an expansion that will only get better, AP stated.
Since quite some time, girls-only teams and leagues have been forming coast to coast, and even continent to continent, for this non-contact sport with lots of fast-paced action. Girls flag football is now legal in eight states as a varsity sport for high school students; more states are starting trial programs. Female players can now apply for NAIA college scholarships. The NFL has even supported flag football by supporting leagues and events.
“This is so big for women to be able to say, ‘I have a dream to play football’ — and to actually know that opportunity is really there,” said Overstreet, a former basketball player at the University of Houston who hopes to be in the mix for a spot on the inaugural Olympic roster. “Just saying that to myself now, I’m still in shock.”
Many people may have grown up playing flag football, whether it was in elementary school gym class, a youth league, or even just on the playground during recess. When flag football was added to the NFL’s Pro Bowl celebrations last winter, it was even more evident.
Five players per team compete on an international field that is 50 yards long (with an additional 10 yards for each end zone) and 25 yards wide, or roughly half the size of an ordinary American football field. To get to midfield for a first down, the attacking team needs four downs. This gives the squad four downs to score if they get to middle.
Furthermore, all offensive players are qualified to be receivers.
The quick nature has captured on.
The participation rate for girls aged 6 to 12 climbed by 178% between 2014 and 2022, according to studies conducted by USA Football. In 2021 and 2022, there were about 112,000 girls in this age group participating in the sport.
similar to Makayla Martinez, a 14-year-old wide receiver from Phoenix who made an impression at last summer’s talent discovery camp hosted by USA Football and the Los Angeles Rams. When she was five years old, she began to play after seeing her cousins dominate the field. But because she didn’t see a way to continue in flag football, she shifted to soccer, at least until recently.
“My dad was like, ‘There’s this girls’ team that’s starting. Do you want to give it a try?’” Martinez recounted. “I was like, ‘No, not really.’ Because I only had played on a boys team. But I gave it a shot. I went for it. I just started focusing on flag football, because I saw that it was growing.”
Currently, flag football is offered as a varsity girls’ sport in Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, and New York. New Jersey has changed its status from club sport to one governed by the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association for the upcoming two spring seasons, joining the growing number of states that are experimenting with it.
Growth is also being produced by the NFL’s potent promotion division. The league has organized exhibitions, a circuit, camps, and clinics.
In the past, the Austin, Texas, Klam family was a baseball family that traveled far to watch their son compete. Currently, Jason and Amberly Klam have formed their own female travel teams and are completely committed to the game of flag football. Since she took the field for a boys team at the age of seven, their 19-year-old daughter Ashlea has been a star in the sport. A few years later, Ashlea went everywhere with an all-girl group that she joined.
As a result, they started Texas Fury, a travel flag football team comprised entirely of girls. They had six girls at first. These days, the Fury has seven teams in different age levels with around sixty players.
Ashlea was awarded a flag football scholarship to Keiser University, one of the almost two dozen NAIA colleges offering programs, located in West Palm Beach, Florida. At Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta last May, Ottawa University in Kansas solidified its dynasty by defeating Thomas University (Georgia) to earn the program’s third consecutive NAIA women’s flag football championship.
“One of my daughter’s dreams come true is getting to play in college,” Jason Klam remarked. “And the future is just amazing with the sport added to the Olympics.”
In October, Ashlea Klam was back in Austin, Texas, advocating for females flag football to be offered as a varsity sport in Texas high schools, when she received a text from her parents. A straightforward screenshot: Officially, flag football was confirmed for the 2028 LA Games. Her sport, track and field, which meant so much to her that she turned down playing at Army, was becoming more popular (along with cricket, baseball-softball, lacrosse and squash).
“I had full faith it was going to” make it in, Ashlea Klam said. “We can really show everyone that flag football deserves to be there — and that flag football should be everywhere.”
On the women’s side, the United States and Mexico already have a strong rivalry. At the International Federation of American Football’s Americas Continental Flag Football Championship in Charlotte, North Carolina, over the summer, the Americans defeated a team from Mexico led by standout quarterback Diana Flores. Flores guided her team to victory at the previous year’s World Games.
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