The Icebox is smiling somewhere… girls flag football comes to PA

https://www.steelers.com/news/piaa-votes-to-sanction-girls-flag-football-in-pa

Good

 

Girls' flag football is the next big thing for high school sports. Pennsylvania is at least the 10th state now that has added it as a varsity sport.

https://www.nfhs.org/articles/flag-...as-next-emerging-high-school-sport-for-girls/

 

I think the Olympics will only speed up that process.

 

Had a great debut in California last year. Playoffs through Section level, but gotta believe CIF will hop on the bandwagon soon.

 

Starting to gain traction in Alabama, although there are still just two combined classifications, versus seven for tackle football. They’ve started having the girls’ championship paired with the 7A title game at the beginning of the Super 7.

 

Interesting to note that the league schedules I've seen have a weekly "jamboree" format, where three schools play a round-robin at a host school in one afternoon.

The other thing that comes to mind is the Powder Puff flag football game in 1975 between senior girls from the our new school against the senior girls from our old school after they split us following 10th grade. The game was played in our gym, and started out somewhat polite. But it soon turned into a much more physical confrontation than expected, given the apparent animosity between former friends. There was more hair pulled than flags and more tackling than touch by the time the game ended. The refs stepped in several times to end some serious pushing and shoving.

I think even the guys on the varsity team learned a few dirty tricks after that display. And a lot of girls came to school with bruises and black eyes the following day. I don't think anyone lost a tooth but I learned to never undestimate the strength of a woman wearing a football jersey.

 

Ohio schools play it, but not as a varsity sport.

The Browns have been instrumental in building it in the Cleveland area. Up to 51 local high schools playing it in four years:

https://www.clevelandbrowns.com/community/youth-football/girls-high-school-flag-football

 

I had a discussion with an ex-writing buddy about it when it came down.

He said that with girls' soccer, field hockey and cross-country already in the fall mix (and don't forget central Pennsylvania is as field hockey-crazy as any locale in the nation), female student-athletes are going to have make a choice. My answer was that they already made that choice 5-6 years earlier, because almost every athletic program is now a 12-month endeavor.

Flag football just became a months-long endeavor, and girls who have been playing another sport for years aren't walking away for it. And it's not as if girls can cling to the dream of a girls' flag football scholarship. Hey, even the best female bowlers have that.

 

Florida's been playing for several years, but in the spring.

 

And I haven't seen that ruled out for PA, either. Of course, then you have lacrosse, softball and track/field.