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There stood Mallory Brinker, a Chatfield High School senior, in the middle of a football field, wearing her black No. 29 jersey with black crosses smeared under her eyes and a red headband holding back blonde tendrils that had escaped her braids.
“I just want to tackle,” she said to her coach. “It’s taking all of my self control not to just….arrrgggh!”
“Mallory,” Chatfield coach Alexis Rosholt replied, “don’t tackle anyone.”
After the game, Brinker pondered tackling versus pulling flags hanging from another girl’s belt. Reaching for them is challenging, she said.
“They’re hard to grab,” she said. “They flap and twist all over the place.”
Brinker is one of more than 500 athletes in three Denver metro school districts who signed up for the inaugural season of high school girls flag football. At Chatfield, 83 registered to play on the first day, forcing the coach to cut it off because she wasn’t sure they could handle that many girls.
The Colorado High School Athletic Association board of directors approved on Wednesday a three-year pilot program with the goal of making flag football a sanctioned sport in 2025. Play began this fall with 25 teams from Denver Public Schools, Cherry Creek School District and JeffCo Public Schools, but CHSAA hopes to expand it to other districts over the next couple of years, association commissioner Mike Krueger said.
Flag football is growing in popularity as more women and girls play the sport and more men and boys decide it’s safer than tackle football. It’s also less expensive — and more accessible — because less equipment is required to play.
USA Football, the NFL and the International Federation of American Football are pushing for flag football to become an Olympic demonstration sport in 2028 in Los Angeles. The NAIA declared womens flag football an emerging sport in 2021 with 16 colleges fielding teams, and the National Junior College Athletic Association also is adding the sport to its offerings.
Seven state high school associations sanction girls flag football, and Colorado hopes to be in the next wave, Krueger said.
“It’s the most popular sport in our country, and we certainly think there’s a place for girls at the table,” he said.
Place on the field
Jayda Glasswright certainly believes she deserves a place on the field.
The Thomas Jefferson senior, who plays quarterback, said it’s been fun to be a part of the inaugural season and prove girls can play football. One reason she wanted to play was to show off her skills to her best friend — Sam White, the senior center on the boys football team.
Glasswright also plays basketball and runs track for Thomas Jefferson. Flag football gave her a new outlet in the fall.
“I already like being aggressive and tough,” she said. “I just love to play sports.”
Lwam Tekle, a senior center for TJ, said she grew up wanting a chance to play football. Now, she has it.
“I want to go down in history,” Tekle said. “It’s fun that they gave girls a chance.”
The Thomas Jefferson team’s sideline illustrated just how popular flag football could be among Colorado girls. There were Black girls and white girls. Girls speaking Spanish. Girls wearing hijabs. Girls with purple hair. Upperclassmen cheering for underclassmen. Soccer players. Basketball players. Swimmers.
Seeing such a diverse group engaged with the sport is rewarding, coach Suzanne Meyer said.
“There’s just a great team spirit,” she said.
Meyer is a math teacher at TJ and wasn’t involved with any athletics teams when the principal approached her about flag football. She agreed to take on the team.
“I love football,” Meyer said. “I have Broncos stuff all over my room.”
The Broncos are a big reason girls flag football is underway in Colorado, Krueger said.
Football crazy Colorado
CHSAA hired Krueger from USA Football and the Broncos approached him about flag football before he officially started in July. The Broncos invited three Front Range school districts to participate in the first season and paid for equipment, referees and coaches’ stipends, he said.
The Broncos also paired with Nike to provide every team uniforms.
The Broncos, like every other NFL team, works with youth and school football leagues to promote the sport. The team was ready to bring more girls into the fold, said Bobby Mestas, the Broncos director of youth and high school football.
“This is something that’s really exploding all over the country,” Mestas said. “It’s about giving girls more opportunities to participate in high school athletics.”
The goal, Mestas and Krueger said, is for flag football to become CHSAA’s 17th sanctioned girls sport.
“It’s a great team activity,” Krueger said. “And it’s one that involves great athletic movement and skills. Multi-sport athletes have a chance to expand their athletic opportunities and grow their skills.”
Colorado already has a national presence among adult women’s football.
In July, the Mile High Blaze, a semi-pro tackle football team, won its first national championship.
Last year, Lace Up, a pro women’s flag football team based in Denver, won a national title in its first season. Two women play for USA Football’s national team, said Coach Mario Lopez, who also volunteers with Arvada West.
“There’s so much upside to women’s flag football,” Lopez said. “It is its own sport. Anybody can play.”
Rosholt, the Chatfield coach, said she’s already received a request for game footage of her players from a college in Texas.
“I told them, ‘You do know they’ve only been playing for four weeks?’”
Veneigh Howard, whose daughter, Khamari Williams, plays for Denver North, said she believes it will catch on at the high school level.
“That’s why so many girls signed up because we are football crazy,” Howard said.
7-on-7
As they built the flag football program from scratch, CHSAA, along with the Broncos and athletic directors from the three school districts, consulted with other states to figure out the rules.
They looked to the Georgia High School Association, which was the first to make flag football an official sport, for guidance. Georgia is in its third year of championship play and added a third division because of the growing popularity, according to the association’s website.
Colorado officials settled on 7-on-7, although USA Football’s National Flag Football teams play 5-on-5, and that is the style being pushed for Olympics consideration.
Colorado’s organizers decided 7-on-7 gave more girls a chance to be on the field, Mestas said.
They wanted to avoid injuries as much as possible as the girls learn the sport, so it is non-contact. There’s no blocking and fumbles are dead balls, so girls don’t slam into each other diving for a loose football.
“We’re trying to keep the incidental contact out of the game,” Mestas said. “There’s not a way to be ultra aggressive in flag football. It’s much more a skill-based game.
“For the time being, we love our rules. It’s very fast-paced. It’s very high scoring.”
For those who might scoff at football where no one gets tackled, Andrew Ryland, senior manager of education and training at USA Football, said spectators need to think about other popular sports that have variations in play. Softball, for example, has slow pitch and fast pitch. Professional rugby teams usually play with 15 players to a side while rugby 7s are played in the Olympics.
“Football, because it is a contact, collision sport, has created these particular barriers and ideas of what football is,” Ryland said.
Some athletes — and their families — love football but also are leery of the tackling.
“The throwing and catching is intriguing to them but maybe they don’t want to fight with other giant human beings,” Ryland said. “Each individual will be attracted to different variations fo the game.”
“Girls can play”
On Tuesday night, JeffCo Public Schools held a jamboree for the teams in its district at JeffCo Stadium.
Arvada principal Shannon Vigil watched her girls beat a team from Columbine, 24-12. The team is creating a buzz on the Arvada campus, which is home to 700 students, 75% of whom are on free or reduced lunch plans.
Flag football is a great fit for Arvada’s athletics program because of its low cost, she said. The flag football coach, Vernon Wittington, also coaches girls and boys basketball.
“We don’t have to buy a lot of equipment,” Vigil said. “It gives a lot of girls access to sports that don’t play other sports. And it’s so new for everybody that you don’t have a powerhouse.”
Emma Ngewasi, an Arvada junior, and Jessica Vazquez, a sophomore, were the stars for the night. Vazquez scored off an interception, too fast for anyone to catch, and Ngewasi, a basketball and soccer star, showed off her footwork as she danced between would-be tacklers, making it hard to grab ahold of the flags fluttering around her waist.
“My older brother and sister play sports,” Ngewasi said. “I got used to being strong and playing rough with them.”
Vazquez said she learned to play football from her dad. Speed runs in the family, she said.
“We’ve been putting that work in,” she said.
The parents also are thrilled with flag football’s introduction.
Shelly Myskiw stood along a railing at JeffCo Stadium watching her daughter, Tia Myskiw, a Chatfield sophomore, play safety.
Myskiw was especially pleased to see hundreds of girls playing a sport together for a few hours, rather than sitting at home and fiddling around on social media.
“She works harder on her academics because wants to be eligible,” she said of her daughter. “She’s made some good friends. Without this, she would be at home on Instagram. Instead, she’s here. In a thousand ways, this is better.”
On another field, Jay Cordova lined up on defense for Pomona. Her 4-foot-11 stature did not hold her back as she hassled an Arvada West quarterback the entire game. One of her pass breakups was so hard that a thundering thump could be heard across the field as she swatted the ball through the back of the end zone.
Cordova, a freshman, started playing flag football when she was five. She played tackle football in a boys rec league for two years in middle school and briefly considered trying out for Pomona’s boys team. But she decided she was too small and would get hurt.
“It’s too scary,” she said.
Then came the announcement about a girls flag football team. Cordova found her place.
On Tuesday, she lined up wearing her black jersey with hot pink sleeves underneath. She returned an interception for a touchdown, helping her team win 38-6.
“I like being competitive,” she said before running off to celebrate with teammates.
Most of all, the girls taking the field this fall said they are proud to be part of something new and breakdown stereotypes in sports.
“Girls can play football,” M.J. Murphy, a Chatfield freshman, said. “It’s not just a man’s sport. It’s equality.”
CHSAA Girls Flag Football Rules
+ Seven players on each side
+ The field is 60 yards long x 30 yards wide
+ Four downs to get to midfield, then another four downs to score
+ Once a team is 5 yards or less from the end zone or midfield point, running plays are not allowed
+ Fumbles are dead balls
+ Interceptions are live balls
+ No blocking
+ No special teams
+ Quarterback can only run if she’s being rushed
If you go
The girls state flag football championships will be held at 2:30 p.m., Oct. 15, at the Pat Bowlen Field House, 13655 E. Broncos Pkwy., Centennial. Admission is free.
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