In January, 34 flag football teams — including nine women’s teams — competed in the 2025 NIRSA National Flag Football Championships at Rice University. The women’s title went to the University of Florida, extending a streak in which no school outside of Florida has won the women’s national title since 2006, the year the championships debuted.
That all could change over the next few years.
In February, NIRSA announced the launch of a women’s flag football league that will provide more opportunities for more clubs to compete in regional leagues across the nation. The new format will also feed into the fall NIRSA Championship Series season by offering clubs an opportunity for preseason play. (As things currently stand, the NIRSA National Flag Football Championships and preceding qualifying regional tournaments offer the only competitive opportunities for all NIRSA flag football teams — men’s, women’s, CoRec and unified divisions.)
“Delivering outstanding three- or four-day championship tournaments is different than offering sustained, geographically focused league play,” says Pam Watts, NIRSA’s executive director, adding that the association already has the specialized knowledge and established connections needed to make a women’s flag football league succeed.
The league is the latest development in the ongoing partnership between NIRSA, NFL FLAG and RCX Sports (the official operating partner of NFL FLAG) — all of which is part of the new “NIRSA Sports Network.” Watts says the network will bring together NIRSA members and create an organizational structure “dedicated to connecting the dots — players, officials, infrastructure, sponsors and donors” required to support consistent league play.
Already, several schools, primarily in the Southeast and Northeast, have expressed interest in fielding club teams for the new league, which will be a separate entity from the NIRSA National Championships. Given the fact that the NCAA Emerging Sports for Women program added flag football in January, more than 30 states currently offer girls’ high school flag football programs and at least 17 offer officially sanctioned state championships, it makes sense for NIRSA to expand the women’s game, as well.
“I love flag football,” says Stephanie Calhoun, assistant director of recreation facilities at Georgia Southern University and chair of the NIRSA Championship Series. “It’s giving female athletes an opportunity to compete in a sport that they haven’t had before. When I was growing up, I didn’t enjoy soccer, and I was just okay at basketball. And I’m, like, ‘Man, I wish I’d had these flag football opportunities.’ Flag football has athleticism and physicality, but it also has a lot of skills and tactics involved. Some of the moves you see by women’s flag football players are ones NFL players can only dream of doing.”
A strong market for the club level
The burgeoning interest in women’s flag football has been a long time coming. The first official NIRSA Championship Series Flag Football Tournament was held in 2006 in Dallas. But the University of New Orleans is credited with hosting the first collegiate national flag football tournament nearly 50 years ago, in 1979.
More recently, the number of competitive options has increased, especially for women. Most notable is the inaugural Fiesta Bowl Flag Football Classic presented by Oakley, which is slated for April 18-19 at Arizona State University’s Fields at Dorsey, a proven venue for elite flag football competition. The seven-on-seven event will feature eight of the nation’s top women’s collegiate flag football programs — and all of them are NIRSA club teams, according to Gary Cahen, associate director for recreation programs at the University of Central Florida (which will be represented at the event).
“It’s been like the Wild West, regarding governance of the women’s game,” says Cahen, who also is a member of NIRSA’s Services Corporation Board of Directors. “No one’s doing anything improper; everyone’s just looking for teams to play against. We all saw that Nebraska announced they’re going to have a Division I women’s flag football program, but a lot of universities are not ready to make that commitment, so there will still be a strong market for the club model.”
NIRSA plans to showcase its new league during either this fall’s NIRSA Championship Series regional tournaments or national championships, according to Calhoun. “We want club teams to come in, compete in their own tournament and then kick off the league the following spring,” she says. “It will be a chance to get some buy-in from the teams and have them experience the socialization aspect, too.”
Another goal with the new women’s league is to have more experienced officials working the games, which means more opportunities for students to become certified officials and bolster the officiating pipeline, both on their campuses and in their communities.
“Our flag football rules book and companion officials’ manual have been the sport’s standard for generations, and officials’ development has been and continues to be a priority,” says Nicole Jackson, NIRSA’s director of national sports programs. “We’re excited to leverage the new NIRSA Sports Network to amplify our impact through partnerships with industry leaders like NFL FLAG, the NCAA and [officiating services platform] RQ+.”
NIRSA does flag football well
Calhoun and Cahen expect the new women’s flag football league to expand exponentially year over year.
“We’re pretty confident we can secure at least 24 teams for spring 2027, because we know those teams already exist,” says Cahen, who adds he wouldn’t be surprised if the number of teams in the league’s inaugural season turns out to be higher.
“We have the infrastructure for club teams within our campus rec programs, but there’s nowhere to go. It’s just setting up friendlies and things like that,” Calhoun says, noting that club teams play a seven-on-seven format and typically carry 10 to 25 players each; some universities have A, B and even C teams. “This will give schools that don’t currently have programs the opportunity to create them, and there will be more clubs to compete against.”
And for those campuses that don’t have women’s flag football programs yet? “The number one thing campus rec professionals say when asked to create an initiative is, ‘Is there any money behind it?’ Because they’re probably dealing with declining resources in their own budgets,” Cahen says.
To that end, Cahen says some of the funding NIRSA receives for this initiative from NFL Flag will be available to campus recreation departments forging new programs. That money could be used to help purchase uniforms and flag belts, he says, or provide startup costs for travel.
UCF’s own flag football programs have brought home 16 NIRSA National Championships across the men’s, women’s and CoRec divisions over the past two decades — which Cahen attributes at least in part to the fact that the university installed six full-size synthetic turf football fields for its flag football teams. “But club sports are not necessarily about winning,” he says. “They’re about participation, growing the sport and promoting wellbeing.”
“I think this is really the opportunity that a lot of schools have been waiting for,” Calhoun adds. “NIRSA does flag football well — we’ve been doing it longer than anybody. The interest is out there. Players want to play. They’ve just been looking for a way to do that, and we’re going to provide it.”
