Flag Football Rising: What It Means for Rugby’s Future
It was an average morning; dark, a little chilly. Thoughts flowing through my head about whether I really needed my job came and went. While I was scrolling through my social media, I was waiting for the shower to warm up something caught my eye. Pennsylvania just sanctioned girls flag football, American football, as a varsity high school sport. My first reaction was my normal one; whenever I see something about girls/women playing football, “That’s silly. Just play rugby. It’s way more fun to play anyway.” Then I started to scroll through the comments and realized there were other states who have already done this. It turns out Pennsylvania is the 13th state to do so.
Now I have nothing against people playing football or flag football, but really? After all the excitement around the Women’s 7’s team taking bronze in the Olympics. After Ilona Maher blowing up everywhere inspiring little girls to fall in love with the sport. It’s girl’s flag football that gets sanctioned, and not girl’s rugby. Really?!
It seems to have been so easy for flag football to become sanctioned by 13 states from across the country when rugby has only been able to get sanctioned in one! Massachusetts sanctioned rugby back in 2015 for the 2016-2017 academic school year. That’s it, only one out of 50 states. Even then the entire state only has one division for girl’s rugby with only seven teams. In comparison, there are four divisions of girl’s lacrosse in Massachusetts with 47 teams in the first division alone!
There are organizations out there who are working really hard to get rugby sanctioned by their respective states. One such organization is the SoCal Interscholastic Rugby Federation (SCIRF). The sole purpose of this organization is to get rugby sanctioned by the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF). They have set up leagues of single school teams that adhere to all the guild lines and policies that any other CIF sanctioned sport would. With that being said, they don’t even offer girls 15’s. They only offer girl’s 7’s (to read an argument for why focusing on 7’s may not be a bad thing you can read an earlier blog here).
In just two years the Philadelphia Eagles and Pittsburgh Steelers helped create 100 girl’s flag football programs across the state. A 100 girl’s flag football programs… IN TWO YEARS!! That kind of growth is insane! Yes, I understand that these are National Football League (NFL) teams that each have more funding than the entire Major League Rugby (MLR) has (by multiples), but still the Emerging Girl’s Rugby initiative is just hoping to reach 25 girl’s rugby school programs across the state of Pennsylvania to prepare for the 2031 and 2033 World Cups. That’s would still only allow Rugby Pennsylvania to apply for an emerging sport status.
To drive the nail home, the NFL partnered with the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) and National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) to make women’s flag football an officially sanctioned college sport. Women’s rugby has been trying since 2016 to reach the 40 programs, currently at 29 collegiate programs, required to become an official National Collegiate Association of Athletics (NCAA) sanctioned sport. I’ll admit this point is a little murky when comparing the NAIA and NJCAA to the NCAA, and the fact that there are men’s and women’s rugby programs that do offer scholarships without being a sanctioned collegiate sport. The fact is, though, that women’s flag football is an officially sanctioned collegiate sport and women’s rugby is not.
Some may try to point to flag football will be an Olympic sport in 2028 on home soil, and that’s why it is gaining some much traction. So? Rugby has been an Olympic sport since Rio 2016, and as mentioned above the US Women’s 7’s team just won bronze in the Paris Games! They were just getting non-stop new coverage from all the major news outlets.
Back to the high school level, one could point to this being an issue of athletes, and their parents, picking a non-contact sport (flag football) over a contact sport (rugby). To counter that argument there are flag rugby competitions led by organizations like Imagine Flag Rugby, which I will get into later, and let’s not pretend that touch rugby is not a ligament sport since there have been Touch Rugby World Cups have been going on since 1988. Those are both very real non-contact options for girls, or boys, to play instead of full contact 15’s or 7’s.
Okay, okay that’s true, but now it’s time to address the elephant in the room. As I’ve eluded to above, the main driving factors for girl’s flag football gaining sanctioning so quickly is from all the financial support from the NFL and the individual NFL teams within the states. One could also say it’s an easier sell because it is a well-known sport, whereas rugby is still a niche sport, but the amount of support and money that can come from the NFL isn’t hurting. With a juggernaut such as that driving the sport forward it’s no wonder girl’s flag football is growing so much faster, but it is not all doom and gloom though.
Even though they don’t quite offer the same amount of funding and support, the MLR, World Rugby, USA Rugby (USAR) and USA Youth and High School Rugby (YHS) are all working together to help grow the youth game. In conjunction with the State Youth Rugby Organizations (SYRO), MLR and YHS relaunched the Rookie Rugby Program (now known as Imagine Flag Rugby) in 2023 with a goal of putting flag rugby in 50,000 schools across the country by the 2031 World Cup. Since the relaunch, Imagine Flag Rugby is now in 649 school’s PE classes across 19 states while reaching 373,000 students. It has also started 51 after school programs with 4,700 kids participating in them. “Imagine Flag Rugby is the official start of the player pathway for USA Rugby and is used in PE classrooms, after-school programs, community programs and flag leagues throughout the USA.” Oh, did I mention that Imagine Flag Rugby is a free service and equipment provider to the US schools who want to put flag rugby in their PE curriculum? Well, it is thanks to grant funding from World Rugby.
Along with this, every MLR team has set up some kind of youth academy team, or in some cases they have setup entire leagues, in their surrounding area. MLR is also supplying players and staff to go out to the individual schools to educate the PE teachers about Imagine Flag Rugby. Are they getting rugby a sanctioned high school sport? No (at least not yet), but this is a good start.
For the more serious high school rugby players, the USAR High Performance and YHS have also launched the Virtual Pathway Program. It is “designed to identify, select, and progressively develop a large pool of aspiring U15-U18 players nationwide, including coordinated player identification programs, regional and national development assemblies – and a novel ‘Virtual Academy.’” Through 2025 the program will select and annually enroll over 375 boys and girls from the ages 15-18. The people behind designing this program are some pretty famous rugby names such as Mick Byrne (two time World Cup winner with New Zealand) and Nick Leah (who’s experiences range from Super Rugby to Japanese Top League to International 7’s). Participation is free for selected athletes, thanks to seed donors and a start-up grant from U.S. Rugby Foundation.
Despite how it may feel at times, rugby at the youth level is growing and moving in the right direction. Even if it’s not moving as fast as we would like it. For now, rugby can’t compete with football, but for the most part it doesn’t have to. Unless of course you live in an area of the country where rugby is played in the fall instead of the spring. In that case, girl’s flag football gaining state sanctioning is in direct competition with rugby. In which case I suggest reaching out to your local SYRO to see how you can help grow the game faster.
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