It’s a perfect night for football. The air is crisp and cool as the sun sets and the lights come on at Mountain View High School’s varsity football field. There’s a cross-town rivalry being battled out as the Cougars face off against the Summit High School Storm. However, this isn’t your typical football game.
There aren’t hordes of fans packing the stadium, but there’s a large group of enthusiastic parents and friends cheering on the players, and a posse of very vocal Mountain View students chanting and yelling. However, the biggest difference is the players. There aren’t any hulking young men, pounding each other to the ground. Instead, there are 14 young women facing off, seven per side, bobbing and weaving while running routes and jumping into the air to catch balls. All the while, they’re trying to evade having any of the three flags attached to a belt at their waist pulled off by an opposing player.
“If you’re thinking it’s going to look like tackle football, it’s not,” said Joe Kennedy, 50, head flag football coach for Mountain View, which beat Summit 36-20. “There’s a lot more passing and no real blocking. You can screen somebody. It’s kind of like basketball. You can stand in somebody’s way, but contact isn’t allowed. If anybody forces contact, there’s a penalty for that. It’s a different game than tackle football. It’s a little more exciting, a little faster, and there’s more of an emphasis on passing as opposed to running. People who like to watch the air attack will probably like to watch this.”
Andy High, 47, head flag football coach at Summit, agrees.
“Football is such a big part of American culture, so it’s really cool that people are learning about it,” High said. “It’s a lot quicker. They’re passing 80 percent of the time versus running. But these young women are still really physical, even with no tackling.”
The Oregon School Activities Association (OSAA) designated Girls Flag Football as an emerging activity in 2025, and it’s on its way to being named an official sport in 2027. Across the state, there are now more than 60 teams, said Kelly Foster, assistant executive director of the OSAA. Initially, only Central Christian, Crook County, and Summit fielded teams in Central Oregon. However, there are now six teams in the area, including Bend, Mountain View, Central Christian, Summit, Crook County and Madras. Additionally, The Dalles plays against Central Oregon teams.
Flag football is similar to boys’ football in so much as there are plays and routes run, and you must get the ball to your opponent’s end zone to score. However, that’s where the similarities end. Flag football is played on a field that’s 80 yards by 40 yards, with no hashes. To score, a team has four downs to cross the midfield line and then another four downs to score. There’s no contact allowed, although when a player’s flag gets pulled off their belt, it’s called a “tackle.” And while you won’t see anyone intentionally taken to the ground, don’t be fooled. It’s still very physical.
“Honestly, it’s a little more tough than I thought it would be for a tackle-free sport,” said Abby High, 18, Andy High’s daughter and a senior at Summit. She’s headed to the east coast this fall, where she’ll play college flag football for the University of Connecticut. “You do get harassed a little bit when you’re out there, like, you have girls pulling everything that they possibly can, and the girls with nails, they always scratch you. It’s really hard not to tackle when everybody’s running at you. Even though it’s a no-contact sport, there’s a lot of contact. That part was a little unexpected.”
In October, the OSAA delegate assembly will vote on whether to designate flag football as an official OSAA sport. At the collegiate level, the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) first offered flag football in 2021, while the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in January officially recognized flag football as part of its Emerging Sports for Women program. Additionally, it’ll debut as an Olympic sport for men and women at the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. And just last month, the National Football League and TMRW Sports announced earlier this year that they’re planning to launch a professional league for men and women. It’s a far cry from the game that U.S. soldiers devised during their downtime while fighting in World War II.
Locally, the sport is growing fast among even younger athletes, too. The Bend FC youth soccer club, which has approximately 3,500 competitive and recreational players, expanded its offerings last September to include flag football for first through fifth graders, said Jessica Passage, Bend FC business manager. The club just started its third six-week, sold-out session.
“It’s a newer program to us, but we see the importance of having another avenue for girls to play sports, and this is obviously a big component of that right now in the world, with it being a rapidly growing sport,” said Passage, whose daughters, Hayden, 10, and Malia, 8, are both participating in flag football and both said they enjoy getting to hang out with their friends while learning a new sport. Passage said Bend FC plans to offer flag football camps this summer and offer sessions for middle schoolers.
“We started this initially as a pilot program and thought, ‘Are people going to want to be involved? Are people going to sign up?’ Now that we know that people want to do it, and they want to sign up, we’ll continue to expand that,” Passage said. “Soccer organizations throughout the U.S. are actually starting to expand the sports that they’re involved in. And so, for us, we are a soccer club, but we’re looking to branch out to bring additional sports opportunities to kids…and we have a high priority when it comes to females in sport.”
Coach Andy High said that flag football has “grown so fast, and it’s still growing. This really wasn’t even a thing in Central Oregon until last spring. We’re still working out all of the kinks because it’s so new, but us parents haven’t messed it up yet.” His older daughter approached him about starting a team after hearing through the grapevine that flag football was becoming a reality at the high-school level.
“Watching my brother grow up playing football, and always going to football games, I’ve just always wanted to play, and I thought I might be good at it,” Abby said. “I heard rumors going around, like, ‘Oh, this is starting,’ and I kind of approached him and was, like, ‘Hey, have your heard of this?’”
Her dad had and quickly jumped on board, adding the girls’ program to his coaching duties, which include coaching the Summit boys freshman football squad and being the varsity Special Teams coach. He’s assisted with flag football by Kourtney Parks, the Summit head girls soccer coach and a former standout Storm soccer player herself. Summit started last year with a team of 24 players and now has 42, including Abby’s younger sister, Natalie, 15, a Summit freshman. The Highs are a football family, as son Zach, 20, plays football (he’s a center) for Southern Oregon University, while mom Jennifer, owner of Method Sports Center, a gymnastics academy, is in the stands for all games.
The same is true for Mountain View’s Kennedy clan. Joe got tapped to coach the flag football squad after Alaka’i “Aly” Aragon, 17, a senior at Mountain View, expressed interest to her mom, Christabel Tabbada, about forming a team. The family, including Aly’s dad, Manuel Aragon, and the couple’s son, Paolo Aragon, 21, a junior at the University of Oregon, are “always throwing a football around,” Tabbada said. Additionally, Tabbada’s niece has played adult coed flag football in Southern California for several years. Tabbada did all the administrative legwork necessary to form the Mountain View team but couldn’t lock down a coach. She saw Kennedy in the stands at a basketball game and it occurred to her that he’d be the perfect fit.
Kennedy is well-known in Central Oregon sports circles. His daughter Cadence, 17, is a Mountain View junior who is a standout softball and basketball player, while her older brothers, Brady, 19, and Jordan, 22, both played football and baseball at Mountain View. Brady, who now plays college baseball for Shasta College in Redding, California, also played basketball. Mom Christina, like Jennifer High, is always in the bleachers, cheering on her offspring. Cadence had already decided to play flag football when Tabbada approached Kennedy about coaching the team.
“I thought, ‘Well, my daughter’s going to play, and I’m going to be at all of those games, so I might as well coach,’” said Kennedy, a math teacher at Pacific Crest Middle School. He’s coached other sports, including high school football, Little League, and travel baseball and basketball.
“I hadn’t been coaching for the past two years, so I’m actually glad to get back into it,” Kennedy said. “This is our first year doing flag football, so it’s pretty low-key. We’re practicing three times a week, for an hour, so it’s not a lot of stress. I think this year is more about having fun, yet trying to be competitive. I want the girls to have a good time, so it’s not high pressure.”
Most of the Mountain View flag football players are also taking part in other spring sports, including softball, track and field, rugby, and club soccer. Therefore, Kennedy and his assistant coach, Mike Miller, whose daughter, Alivia Bryan, is a Mountain View sophomore and flag football player, has made practices as accessible as possible.
“We can’t get on the football field to practice until after track is done anyway, so we have practices at 7 pm. That works good for most of the girls because their other practices are over. They get a little food in them and then they can come to flag football,” Kennedy said. “My only requirement was I said you have to make it to two of the three practices each week. I don’t want them to be overloaded and overwhelmed.”
Aragon, who’s committed to play basketball at Glendale Community College in California this fall, is one such multi-sport athlete. She competes in the distance events in track. Ironically, she’s also going to be a multi-sport athlete at Glendale, as the head women’s basketball coach is going to start a women’s flag football team next spring. She said she’s enjoyed getting to learn a new sport.
“There are always aspects of other sports in the current sport you’re playing,” Aly said. “For flag football, you can set a screen, but you can’t touch anyone. That’s hard to get used to. In basketball, you can create contact as much as you want as long as you’re not fouling the other player. It’s definitely different, and it’s really fun to be challenged with a new sport.”
Foster, of the OSAA, said one of the greatest things about flag football is that everyone involved is learning and growing the sport together, and are having a ball while doing so.
“Girls flag has been such a joyful addition,” Foster said. “That’s the word that comes to mind. The kids out there playing are having so much fun. They’re being included in a sport that they’ve traditionally been left out of. And there are very few girls who are going into it with any previous experience in the sport. They’re all learning this sport for the first time and so there’s just this exponential growth that happens at every practice. It’s a universal story that I’ve heard from everyone who’s participating.”
That includes referees and coaches, Foster said, many of whom are coming from the “tackle side” of boys football. “They said, ‘Kelly, this was the most fun we’ve had in our coaching career. This is from coaches who’ve been coaching forever. Even our officials, who are mostly coming from the ranks of tackle officials, are enjoying themselves. It’s so awesome. It’s growing participation opportunities for girls, and it’s such a cool thing to see.” Playoffs for flag football begin next week with a championship-style event capping the season on Saturday, May 16 at Liberty High School in Hillsboro. The top team in each league gets an automatic berth to the championships, while the remaining eight berths are based on state-wide rankings. Summit’s schedule is at https://www.osaa.org/teams/67082, while Mountain View’s is at https://www.osaa.org/teams/67062#tabs-V
This article appears in the Source May 7, 2026.
MAKE LOCAL JOURNALISM HAPPEN
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
