Flag football was once a recreational activity played throughout the United States in collegiate leagues on college campuses and on playgrounds during recess or physical education classes for elementary school children.

Over the last decade, the sport has been taken more seriously and interest in it has spread worldwide to the point where it will be included in the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

When the time comes, there could be an Alaska representative on Team USA, as the sport has grown so much in the Last Frontier in recent years. The 2024 fall season will be the first to hold a state tournament sanctioned by the Alaska School Activities Association.

“It gives the sport even more recognition, especially in girls’ sports,” said Amy Fischer, co-head coach of Colony/Palmer. “It’s been a little bit of a challenge to make it a real sport in people’s minds.”

She says the term “powderpuff” has been around for some time and is often used in a derogatory way to describe, belittle and denigrate girls’ sports.

“It’s a real, ASAA-recognized sport, and now that we have enough girls and enough teams to be able to host a state tournament, people are starting to realize, ‘Oh, this is a real sport and there’s a real season,'” Fischer said.

According to Lance Cheney, head coach at Lathrop, a recognized state title is a sign of growth, but the sport already enjoys “quite a high reputation” in schools that offer such programs.

“We are happy to be playing for a real title, but I don’t know if confirmation is the right word,” he said.

For a high school sport to be eligible to host a state tournament sanctioned by the Alaska School Activities Association, there must be at least three districts representing different parts of the state.

Interest and participation in flag football has exploded over the past decade across the country and in Alaska—including in the interior and in Mat-Su, where there are now two teams in each region.

“We’ve been hoping the Valley would get teams since we’ve had teams,” Cheney said of the Mat-Su. “It’s great to have them coming now. We’re traveling a lot more than we did before, but we’re excited to be able to compete with more teams.”

In Fairbanks, both West Valley High School and Lathrop High School have had teams for 11 years. In the Valley, Wasilla High has had a team for a few years.

Unlike the Anchorage teams, who competed in the Cook Inlet Conference tournament every year, the Fairbanks teams had no regional or conference postseasons. The team with the best overall record was crowned champion of the Mid-Alaska Conference.

“We’re so excited to have a real state championship,” Cheney said. “We just won our local championship and we’re ready to have a real state title (on the line).”

The last domino to fall and lead to approval was the inclusion of the cooperative of Palmer and Colony high schools, founded last year.

“With Valley piloting the program last year and Redington now having a JV or C team, we are now in a position to win a state championship,” said Dimond head coach Pete Mandel.

He has seen interest in the sport in Anchorage grow even more exponentially with his own program.

“Our numbers have skyrocketed,” Mandel said. “We had a huge group of 15 freshmen and two are on the varsity team.”

Next year, Mat-Su will have three teams, as both Palmer and Colony will have their own programs and will no longer be a co-op.

“At Colony High School alone, there are over 30 girls enrolled who play flag football, and another 14 from Palmer are on the team,” Fischer said.

She says that over half of the athletes enrolled for the fall season at the two schools are female, and that offering flag football as an additional elective for the second year in a row played a “huge” role in making that goal a reality.

“It’s just incredible and super exciting to see that there is so much interest in something in the fall,” said Fischer. “Interest is booming and we’ve almost doubled our numbers compared to last year.”

While Palmer High School fielded a flag football team for the first time last year, interest and participation in the sport at the middle school level had been growing rapidly for several years.

Many of the girls who wanted to stay had to play tackle football with the boys after enrolling.

“Last year, several middle schools here in the Valley had two or three different all-girls teams at the middle school level,” Fischer said.

Fischer never played flag football growing up, but she coached other sports at Mat-Su, including basketball and volleyball. Just before the start of last season, she was encouraged to join the team by her assistant head coach Dustin Wilson.

“He said, ‘Hey, you can learn flag football,’ because I had never played before, and he asked me to come and help him practice because the teams were being combined,” Fischer said.

Wilson previously coached girls flag football at the middle school level and has now moved to the high school level.

“He acts as head coach during the games because you can only have one, but we lead the training sessions and do all the other things together,” Fischer said.

In addition to the chance to hoist a state championship trophy, the popularity of flag football can also pave the way for girls in Alaska to receive scholarships to play the sport in college while they complete their studies.

“Now that we have a state tournament, these girls are going to try to get scholarships and it’s all going to happen very quickly,” Fischer said. “Everything builds on each other and that gives the sport a lot more validity.”

The state tournament will be held in Wasilla from October 17-19.

Permanent top team among the top contenders

When it comes to flag football, Dimond High has been Alaska’s premier school since its founding in 2006.

The Lynx have won 11 of 18 Cook Inlet Conference titles, including the last four. Now that flag football is poised to win its first sanctioned state championship this year through the ASAA, their main goal is to continue their reign by becoming the first team to be crowned Alaska state champions.

“That’s definitely the goal,” said Mandel, who is in his first year as head coach. “We’ve said that from the beginning.”

South Anchorage, last year’s CIC runner-up, was selected by various Anchorage School District athletic departments to represent the state in the third annual Nike Football Kickoff Classic.

“We thought we were the team that would get the chance, but the district picked someone else and I spoke to the South coach at the meeting and just said ‘good luck,'” Mandel said. “We would have loved to be in that game, but other decisions were made that were out of our control.”

South represented Last Frontier well in Beaverton, Ore. Last Thursday, the Wolverines beat defending Louisiana state champion De La Salle 13-0, returning home and improving their record to 4-0 after beating East 16-6 on Tuesday night.

The only other team with the same record as South is West, who are yet to drop a point this season after beating Dimond 24-0 at home on a rainy Tuesday night.

“They’ve been beating us up for years and we’re kind of sick of it,” West head coach Antonio Wyche said. “We have the mindset this year that we’re not the bad guy, but we don’t like some of the other things that have happened, like South being allowed to leave the state and us not getting the recognition of being the best team in the state — so we’re going to show it.”

The Eagles want to be the first team to win state championships in high school flag football. At the start of the season, they seem highly motivated and well-equipped to achieve this goal.

“This is a big deal for us,” Wyche said. “It’s the first state championship and it would be an honor to be the first state champion.”