“What’s fueled the growth is not just the school’s appetite or even the girls’ appetite to play the sport, but it’s the community to get behind the sport that the parents, the other coaches, the other students that come out and support the girls playing high school flag football,” the Jets’ Linder said.
Future New York champions won’t come through the Jets facility, as the state’s high school governing body earlier this year made it the first in the nation to recognize girls flag football as a championship varsity sport. New York gets its first sanctioned title game in 2024.
New recruits
This year, the Jets also teamed with the Bears to create a 12-team girls flag football league among schools in the United Kingdom. Roughly, 130 athletes took part in the league’s inaugural season, and the league champion from Ealing Fields was honored at a Buffalo Bills-Jacksonville Jaguars game at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London on Oct. 8.
“Flag creates opportunities for the lowest cost, the lowest barrier to entry,” Oben said, noting the sport’s lack of expensive equipment or specialized facilities.
The Jets’ Linder noted that the game’s accessibility is drawing new sponsors as well. The team’s EmpowHER flag football docuseries spent its first two seasons sponsored by Nike before yielding to Audi in 2023. Like the NFL’s commercial with Flores, the series wasn’t necessarily showing sponsors something new—just what their role in it could be.
“All of our corporate partners that saw this just wanted to be a part of it, and [wondered] how they could help grow the game with us,” Linder said.
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