After two seasons of Tennessee high school girls flag football pilot programs in Williamson, Davidson and Montgomery counties, the TSSAA voted Tuesday to sanction the sport for the 2024-25 school year.
The TSSAA’s Legislative Council voted unanimously to sanction girls flag football as an “emerging sport,” which means that will be treated the same as all TSSAA sanctioned sports, except that a state championship will not be offered immediately. It will remain a spring sport.
Emerging sports are defined by the TSSAA as having 15% or more of the TSSAA membership schools either participating in the sport or committing to participation once sanctioned.
“I think it’ll push more to the growth,” Franklin girls flag football coach Donnie Webb said. “I mean, these are athletes, they’re female athletes and they compete, just like, you know I was a football coach for 30 years, and they compete just like boys. They want to win and have fun at the same time. We just want to expand it and grow.”
Participation has increased from nine Williamson County Schools in 2022 to 48 schools including other counties this season. The Upper Cumberland area and Hamilton County started girls flag football this season to help push the number up. There are expected be at least 70 schools in Tennessee playing in 2025, with the addition of 10 Rutherford County schools next spring and another 13-15 from another district.
“Well, it would just be really nice to get some more practice in, because we work really hard, but to be able to actually be with our team and actually get that recognition as a sport, for women’s football, that’s obviously not very popular,” said Franklin junior Samantha Jennings, a wide receiver and safety. “That would just mean a lot for us because we work really hard.”
The TSSAA noted flag football’s growth at the youth level and increased scholarship opportunities as reasons to consider sanction. It also noted that about 72,000 boys played TSSAA sports last year compared to around 40,000 girls.
Williamson County Schools began a pilot program in the spring of 2022 with support from the Tennessee Titans. At the time, a Williamson County Schools survey showed 650 of 800 female athletes asked said they would be interested in playing flag football. It was the first interscholastic flag football league in Tennessee.
“Our principal, Dr. (Shane) Pantall, is a huge proponent of students getting involved in things,” Webb said. “We had over 100 girls that we had to cut down to 28. So it’s a no brainer that this was going to eventually make it.”
Davidson and Montgomery counties joined the Middle Tennessee flag football community a year later. Hillsboro beat Overton for the first Metro Nashville Flag Football championship. West Creek knocked off Montgomery Central in Clarksville’s first flag football title game.
Ravenwood captured the first Williamson County championship in 2022 and repeated as champs last year.
Eight states have sanctioned girls high school flag football – Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, New York, Florida, Georgia and Nevada. Twenty other states have pilot programs. Like the Titans, the Atlanta Falcons were instrumental in growing the sport in Georgia and Alabama. The Falcons helped fund high school teams in both states.
The sport has grown rapidly in the Nashville area. A men’s professional league, the American Flag Football League, was established last summer and Nashville was awarded a franchise along with Boston, Dallas and Las Vegas. Fairview football coach Chris Hughes serves as Nashville’s coach.
The Nashville Nighthawks begin play April 27, and the AFFL’s eight-game regular season will run through June 15 with a championship game June 22 in Frisco, Texas. The Nighthawks’ two home games will be played at Vanderbilt’s lacrosse and soccer complex.
Reach sports writer George Robinson at georgerobinson@theleafchronicle.com and on the X platform (formerly Twitter) @Cville_Sports. Harrison Campbell contributed to this story.
