On Feb. 5, the Illinois High School Association (IHSA) approved the girls’ flag football State Series, set to debut the following school year, making Illinois the ninth state to implement girls’ flag football.
The IHSA reports commitments from over 100 schools to participate in the 2024 State Series, while nearly 40 other schools have expressed that they anticipate fielding a team in 2025.
“The addition of Girls Flag Football furthers the IHSA mission of creating participation opportunities for high school students in Illinois,” said IHSA Executive Director Craig Anderson. “The sport has experienced significant growth in a short amount of time, and our member schools are excited to see it become an IHSA sport. The Chicago Public Schools Athletic Administration and the Chicago Bears both deserve significant praise for their grassroots efforts in shepherding and supporting the growth of girls flag football in Illinois.”
H-F, as of the 2024-25 school year, will not be participating, but not due to resources.
“The district performed a student interest survey last year which involved clubs, activities and sports that kids could be interested in,” athletic director Matthew Lyke explained. “The survey showed 2/419 students asked for flag football. On top of that school-wide interest survey, we also polled the field hockey team to gauge their interest, and all of those girls wanted field hockey to stay.”
This being said the decision to not bring flag football to H-F this school year isn’t set in stone for future years.
“I know full well that there is gaining interest in flag football, so we’re going to put out another student interest survey and see where that lands,” Lyke expressed. “It’s on our radar, and now that the IHSA has made it a sport, hopefully, that gains other interest with kids and we can support both field hockey and flag football in the future.”
However, in Chicago, in partnership with Chicago Public Schools, NFL FLAG and Nike, the Chicago Bears announced the launch of the Chicago Public League Girls Flag Football in 2021 and have been instrumental in this implementation.
“One of the primary goals of the Chicago Bears is to grow the game of football by making it inclusive, accessible, diverse and equitable,” said youth and high school football manager Gustavo Silva. “So that means everybody. Girls flag football — that’s spot on. It’s not just gender equity. You look in the room, you look at the culture diversity, [socioeconomic] diversity, geographic diversity. That’s all important.”
Despite H-F holding off, Andrew High School has recently implemented this new sport, head-coached by science teacher Tracy Sukalo.
“We also surveyed the middle of last year but had very different results,” Andrew High School vice principal and flag football coach Tim Dalton said. “We had about 75 girls show interest. In the end, we had 60 girls try out but unfortunately had to cut 30 because it’s only a 7v7 game.”
Andrew’s season kicked off Sept. 10 with a 0-26 loss against Stagg High School and a 14-39 loss against Romeoville High School.
