On spring weekends across the St. Louis area, girls are filling football fields once dominated by boys — pulling flags, scoring touchdowns and building one of the region's fastest-growing youth sports.
Now, that growth could soon reach the high school level, as the Missouri State High School Activities Association moves toward making girls flag football an official sport.
MSHSAA member schools voted last year to designate flag football as an emerging sport, putting it on a path to full accreditation. There are 53 schools statewide offering the sport, including 17 in the St. Louis area.
That total clears the threshold for the next step in the process, which is to make flag football provisionally interscholastic. That will happen for the 2026-27 school year.
For girls flag football to make the final jump and become fully interscholastic, that same number of schools would need to keep playing and schools would have to vote to approve it. If that happens, flag football would become an official high school sport in the 2027-28 school year, complete with a state championship.
"Our goal at MSHSAA is to get as many students as possible involved in sports and activities," said Andrew Kauffman, director of communications for the association. "To [potentially] add another sport, and give another opportunity, is great."
Missouri would join neighboring Illinois and Kansas, which have already sanctioned flag football at the high school level.
Chiefs behind flag football push
Part of that growth has been driven by the Kansas City Chiefs, who have pushed to expand the sport across the region. Their efforts paid off when the Kansas State High School Activities Association voted last week to sanction girls flag football.
Kansas becomes the 18th state to adopt the sport, with a state championship set to begin in the 2026-27 school year.
The Chiefs have launched dozens of youth programs in the Kansas City area aimed at introducing girls to the game. They've also backed high school programs in St. Louis, including one at Lutheran South. Sheila Sickau, the Chiefs' director of football development, expects participation to continue to climb.
"It's going from that club pilot program to giving the same validity as if I were to say I played for my high school basketball team, my high school soccer team, my high school tackle football team," Sickau said.
Once girls graduate, there may be a path for them to play in college and even professionally. The NCAA has added flag football as an emerging sport, and the NFL is launching professional flag football leagues ahead of the sport's debut in the 2028 Olympics.
"Now we've created a path for you to make it all the way professional, Olympic, get a college scholarship, and just trying to make that same pathway that men have access to play tackle football," Sickau said.
Illinois schools see success
In Illinois, where girls flag football has been sanctioned for two years, participation continues to grow. The state crowned its first champions last season, and more programs are being added each year.
Alton High School recently announced it would add flag football for the 2026-27 school year. Alton will compete against teams in the Southwestern Conference, which includes schools like Edwardsville, Mascoutah, East St. Louis and Belleville East and West.
The latter two schools saw great success in the first season but had to travel long distances just to play games. At the time, most of the schools with flag football were in northern Illinois. Now, with more schools in the Metro East adding teams, the travel schedule will be much easier.
In Illinois, flag football is a fall sport, and girls play at the same time as the boys. However, in Missouri, most teams have been playing their games in the spring. The ultimate decision on when the games will be played will come down to MSHSAA member schools when they vote to make the sport fully interscholastic.
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