A nearly two-year campaign to make girls flag football an official varsity sport in Massachusetts faced a hard deadline Thursday, with organizers still short of the principal support letters required to even get the proposal in front of state regulators. The group behind the push, All Girls Flag, needed signed letters from at least 15 percent of all Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association member high schools — roughly 57 to 58 schools — to submit a proposal for review by the MIAA Board through its “Emerging Sport” pathway.
As of September 26, organizers had secured 31 principal support letters, leaving them 27 letters short of that threshold, according to Sports Illustrated. Separately, Boston 25 News reported that All Girls Flag needed just seven more signatures to resubmit its application to the state by Thursday's deadline. The MIAA rule is strict: missing the October 1 cutoff forces the group to wait until the following school year to reapply, per the Sports Illustrated report.
Kayla Balamotis, a co-founder of All Girls Flag, has spent nearly two years building support across the commonwealth alongside fellow co-founder Alicia Bernardo, the report notes. Balamotis told Boston 25 News that girls have wanted to play flag football for years because they see boys playing it and watch it on television, and that many players are drawn to the sport because it involves more skill, moves faster, and carries less risk of tackling-related injury than traditional football.
A Sport Growing Faster Than the Paperwork
The numbers behind the campaign help explain the urgency. Massachusetts girls flag football has exploded from eight teams during its inaugural spring pilot in 2023 to 23 teams in 2024, 51 teams in 2025, and roughly 90 teams in 2026, the same Sports Illustrated report found. That growth traces back to the New England Patriots Foundation, which launched the original pilot in April 2023 by handing out $5,000 grants and Nike jerseys to participating schools.
Nationally, the sport's rise has been even steeper. Female flag football participation surged to 102,360 players across nearly 4,000 high schools in 2026 — a 48.7 percent jump in a single year and a sixfold increase from the 15,716 participants counted in 2021-22, per the outlet's reporting. At least 14 states, including California, Florida, Georgia, New York, Illinois, Arizona, Alabama, Nevada, Alaska, Colorado, and Ohio, had already sanctioned girls flag football as a varsity sport as of mid-2026, according to NFHS, with Florida alone running more than 360 high school programs.
Why the MIAA Keeps Saying Not Yet
This isn't the campaign's first attempt at formal recognition. The MIAA previously rejected proposals to sanction girls flag football as an official varsity sport, according to MIAA documentation. Those rejections pushed advocates to pivot toward the letter-based Emerging Sport pathway instead of waiting for another full handbook vote.
The administrative resistance hasn't stopped high-profile figures from publicly backing the effort. Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey, State Representative Rodney Elliott, and New England Patriots Chairman Robert Kraft have all voiced support for making girls flag football an MIAA-sanctioned varsity sport, per InsideLowell. Elliott reportedly appealed directly to Healey after the MIAA's earlier refusal to sanction the sport, the outlet reported.
Colleges and the Olympics Add Pressure
The stakes extend well beyond Massachusetts high school gyms and fields. In January 2026, the NCAA voted across Divisions I, II, and III to add women's flag football to its Emerging Sports for Women program starting in the 2026-27 academic year, according to the NCAA. Flag football is also set to debut at the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, giving athletes a potential pipeline from high school varsity rosters to college scholarships and, eventually, an Olympic stage.
One concern that has shadowed the sport's expansion is whether it might simply pull athletes away from established spring sports like softball or lacrosse. But survey data from the National Federation of State High School Associations shows that roughly half of female student-athletes who join flag football teams are playing a high school sport for the first time, suggesting the sport is expanding participation rather than redistributing it.
Part of the pitch to skeptical administrators is also practical. Official 5v5 non-contact flag football requires minimal equipment and a field just 25 yards wide by 50 yards long with seven-yard end zones, according to MIAA documentation, which notes that multiple flag teams can easily share existing field space. That low cost and logistical footprint has been central to organizers' argument that Massachusetts schools can add the sport without straining athletic department budgets.
Whether that argument carries the day may now hinge on a handful of missing signatures. If All Girls Flag falls short of the MIAA's threshold by Thursday's deadline, the campaign's rapid grassroots momentum will run headlong into the same administrative calendar that has already blocked two prior attempts — meaning another year's wait before Massachusetts girls can suit up for a sport already sanctioned in more than a dozen other states.
