Flag football for girls is growing nationally. Is it coming to Rhode Island soon?

Is football coming to the spring high school sports schedule?

Maybe – just not the football you're thinking of.

While traditional football will forever be a fixture in the fall (minus a schedule shift due to a national pandemic), girls flag football is quickly gaining traction to be added as high school sport. It’s a sanctioned sport in nine states, with others following next academic year, and while it’s not on the table here in Rhode Island, it is being considered.

“We’ve presented it to the schools over the last year two or three times, just talking about the concept of it,” RIIL Executive Director Michael Lunney said. “There’s a big push from the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) and the NFL to get it sanctioned in high schools across the country.

More: 'These girls can be pioneers': Why flag football is becoming so popular with kids

“At this point our position has been, and the schools’ position is, we’re not going to sanction it until there’s an interest at the school level first.”

If what happened at Johnston High School recently is any indication, that might be sooner than you think.

Johnston has been proactive in building a flag football program. Randy Phillips, an assistant with the Panthers football team, created a club team at the high school and had more than 30 girls sign up.

“When I heard the girls showing up for flag were the same ones who didn’t participate in gym class, that’s when I was most shocked,” Phillips said. “The turnout was really good once you get one girl – a few others come because their friend joined and next thing you know I have 35 players.”

Phillips, along with Johnston athletic director Justin Erickson and football coach Joe Acciardo, put together the Gridiron Girls Camp, a four-hour flag football skills camp that had more than 80 participants from around the state.

Helping out at the camp was Jennifer Welter, who served as a coaching intern for the Arizona Cardinals in 2015 and became the first female coaching intern in NFL history.

“I called Jen up and she said it’s time to do a camp for Rhode Island,” Phillips said. “The main purpose and the goal was for our young ladies in the community to see there is a powerful woman that has made it in sports.

“I wanted that drive for our girls to play football and be the best they can be.”

Phillips said he has spring-sport athletes on his club team and works his twice-a-week practices around their varsity games and practices. On May 11, Johnston will take part in a girls flag football tournament with high school club teams from Central Falls, Mt. Hope, North Providence, St. Raphael and Times2 Academy.

The goal was to get in on the ground floor of the girls flag football movement. He’s hoping that schools around the state will take a similar leap of faith and Phillips knows his community will go above and beyond when it comes to supporting the sport.

“It’s going to be lights out,” Phillips said. “Johnston football during the fall, people show up. For this, the boys will show up for them, the faculty will be out there. We just need it to be a sanctioned sport.”

Stanley Dunbar is rooting for the same thing.

Dunbar, an All-State defensive back at St. Raphael who played at the University of Rhode Island and later became head coach at Coventry and Westerly, is the founder of Breakthrough Elite, a 7-on-7 flag football program that’s become a training ground for some of the state’s best players as passing leagues become the norm nationwide.

Traveling around the country for tournaments, Dunbar saw more and more girls taking part in football – both tackle and flag. Rhode Island didn’t have representation on the girls side, so last summer he created what is believed to be the first girls flag football team in the state under his Breakthrough Elite umbrella.

“We were getting a lot of girls reaching out asking why we didn’t have a team for girls,” Dunbar said. “We had over 30-something girls try out, and narrowed it down to put together a team.

“There are really good athletes from around the state with different types of athletic backgrounds, from competitive cheer, basketball players and volleyball players. Girls who are athletes and play three sports, those are the girls that can really play.”

The Breakthrough team played in three tournaments last year. Practices are no different than what Dunbar does with his boys teams. Dunbar’s focus is on the fundamentals and, as the girls developed, they went over the finer points of football offense – like learning route trees, understanding offensive concepts and how to work in the space the defense gives you.

“You look at the landscape for football and more and more girls are playing or want to play football,” Dunbar said. “Now being a girl dad, I see girls can do everything the boys can do so I don’t see why the girls should be held back from playing.”

While it seems as easy as just adding the sport to the RIIL rotation, there are some things to consider.

The NFHS is in the process of putting together rules for both the 7v7 and 5v5 versions of the sport (Dunbar’s team played 5v5). Lunney said the RIIL wouldn’t force the sport on the schools, but enough came forward to say they would support it and that adding flag football to the calendar would be very possible.

When it would be played is the bigger question. Fall is almost certainly out of the question, especially with the number of girls sports (cross country, field hockey, soccer, tennis and volleyball). Winter would be tough because of the cost associated with renting indoor facilities to host games or tournaments.

Spring seems the likely candidate. Most of the nine states that sanction the sport do so in the spring. It seems easy enough, but it is the athletes who participate in girls spring sports – lacrosse, softball, track – who would be ideal candidates to play flag football.

While flag football itself doesn’t require a large number of players – Lunney said 10 to 12 is enough – schools would have to see if they could support a new sport while not effectively killing off existing ones.

“With any new sport, it really all comes back to what the interest level is at the schools and if it is something that we really want to pursue,” Lunney said. “But the whole point is we want to make sure that if we’re offering something new, it will bring new kids into the equation and not take away from sports that are already there.”

Lunney couldn’t offer up a potential timeline as to when flag football could become a sanctioned RIIL sport because, as of right now, enough schools haven’t shown the interest.

But with the momentum that’s building for it, don’t be surprised if it happens sooner rather than later.

“Football is America’s sport, regardless of the demographics,” Dunbar said. “There are girls interested in football throughout the entire country and if this becomes a high school sport it would be something girls would take to.

“If it becomes a college sport, with opportunities beyond high school? Yes, it would attract a lot more girls to the game.”

“We’ll continue to have these conversations,” Lunney said. “We’re presenting this to the schools not as something we’re trying to force upon them, but we want them to know what’s happening around the country.

“It’s something that is starting to pick up momentum, not just here in New England, but nationally.”

“I want this state to see what this can be,” Phillips said. “I want people to see what happens when you let the girls do what they do because believe me, there are some phenomenal athletes out there.”

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Girls flag football gaining traction in Rhode Island high schools