Girls in Detroit who once had to travel outside the city just to play organized flag football are getting their own home turf this week. Wild Child Athletics is hosting a takeover event at Wayne State University designed to introduce girls to the sport, connect them with women athletes and leaders, and build the confidence to try something new.
The event, held in partnership with Gatorade, Delta Air Lines, the Women's Sports Foundation, Oakley, and MGM Grand, will include giveaways, photo opportunities, customized jerseys and sports bras, and hands-on instruction, according to ClickOnDetroit. Girls attending will learn flag-pulling and quarterback fundamentals, with instruction geared toward both experienced players and total newcomers. Organizers describe it as a chance for girls to learn the game, meet athletes, and build confidence, all in one afternoon.
A Detroit Takeover Rooted In Requests From Local Girls
Wild Child Athletics was founded by Candice Davis Price, and the organization's mission is to expand access to girls' flag football. The Wayne State event, Davis Price said, is part of what she calls a Detroit takeover for Wild Child Athletics, following the program's earlier launch in Ypsilanti this year, per the same ClickOnDetroit report. She described it plainly: the takeover is a little taste for girls to get out there.
That framing isn't abstract marketing. Detroit girls had faced transportation and distance barriers to programs located outside the city, and some reached out to Davis Price directly on social media about the difficulty of participating in leagues elsewhere. Wild Child Athletics says it aims to create a pathway for girls who might otherwise never have the opportunity to play football at all.
Davis Price brings serious athletic credentials to the effort. She won gold in the 100-meter hurdles at the 2007 NACAC Championships and silver in the 60-meter hurdles at the 2008 World Indoor Championships, and in May 2025 she made Michigan High School Athletic Association history as the first female coach to lead a boys team to a Division 1 state title, guiding Belleville High School's track and field program, according to the Michigan High School Athletic Association.
From Track Speed To Flag-Pulling Instincts
Two girls featured in the ClickOnDetroit coverage show how varied the on-ramps into the sport can be. Aubrey Kirby has track experience and confidence in her speed, and she said she thinks she will be really good at flag football as she prepares to try the sport for the first time. Audrey King previously competed in track and field, started playing flag football in January, and has transferred her track speed and agility into her new position on the field.
King said she loves flag football because it is diverse, and she noted that more scholarships are coming into the sport across the country. Davis Price echoed that girls bring more to the game than people give them credit for, saying women are more intellectual on the football field than people think.
Detroit's Own Season Kicks Off This Fall
The Wayne State event doubles as a preview for what's coming this fall. A River Rouge facility will open for girls' flag football in September, and Detroit is preparing for its own seven-week girls' flag football season, giving local players a home league instead of a commute. Wild Child Athletics' broader Fall 2026 season begins September 6, running at both Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti and the Detroit River Rouge site, with an early-bird registration price of $99, per Wild Child Athletics.
Organizers hope the Wayne State event will spark a larger movement to draw more girls into the sport, and they're not the only ones building infrastructure for it. As Hoodline previously reported, the Detroit Lions' Michigan girls high school flag football pilot league has grown fast, expanding from four founding schools in 2023 to more than 40 participating schools by 2025. That growth was fueled in part by a $325,000 three-year grant the Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Foundation awarded to the Detroit Lions Foundation in May 2024 to seed middle and high school programs across southeast Michigan.
A Widening Path All The Way To The Olympics
The stakes for girls picking up the sport now extend well beyond a single afternoon at Wayne State. In January 2026, the NCAA added women's flag football to its Emerging Sports for Women program across Division I, II and III, setting up a vote at the January 2027 NCAA Convention that could produce a national collegiate championship by spring 2028, according to the Associated Press. The NAIA got there earlier, sanctioning women's flag football as a varsity sport back in the 2020-2021 academic year and allowing member schools to award up to 12 full athletic scholarships per team.
The sport's ceiling now reaches the Olympics, too. The International Olympic Committee approved men's and women's flag football as official medal sports for the Los Angeles 2028 Summer Games during its October 2023 session, with the NFL and IFAF backing its Olympic debut. Female participation in NFL FLAG youth programs has climbed 50 percent over the three years leading into 2026, and more than 17 states have now sanctioned girls' flag football as an official varsity high school sport, with total nationwide participation topping 830,000 players.
Michigan's high school competitive scene is already established, even as girls' flag football keeps expanding into new cities. St. Joseph High School captured its second consecutive Michigan Girls High School Flag Football League state championship in June, defeating Gibraltar Carlson 28-12 at Ford Field in a tournament that featured 15 teams following a four-week regular season, according to FOX 2 Detroit. For now, whether the Michigan High School Athletic Association will move to formally sanction girls' flag football as a full varsity sport statewide remains an open question, as does whether Detroit's urban facilities can scale quickly enough to keep pace with rising demand from young female athletes.
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