As one of the fastest-growing sports in the country, girls flag football fever is sweeping across the nation — and for the thousands of young women in Pennsylvania taking part in the sport, it’s about to get real.
A little more than a year after being designated by the PIAA as an “emerging sport” in Pennsylvania, the PIAA board of directors voted on Wednesday to adopt girls flag football as an officially sanctioned sport, and the motion passed by a unanimous tally of 32-0. In order to become officially sanctioned by the PIAA, a sport must have at least 100 participating schools across the state, a threshold that girls flag football reached in April.
Now, the PIAA will begin the process of formulating a rulebook and implementing a playoff system for the sport, among other procedures. The WPIAL and PIAA will begin to sanction the sport in the spring of 2026, but there will be no “official” PIAA championships until the 2026-27 school year.
“We’re thrilled that we can offer another opportunity for girls to participate in interscholastic athletics,” PIAA president Frank Majikes said in a press release. “This is the second girls’ sport in two years to be approved. In recognizing the National Federation of High School Associations (NFHS), we will be initiating development of a girls’ flag football rules book in January 2025. This will allow us to develop our process to host a championship. The structural changes to the sport won’t begin until the 2025-26 school year.”
Both the Pittsburgh Steelers and Philadelphia Eagles played vital roles in accelerating the sport’s growth, with both NFL franchises hosting leagues the past three years that helped lay the groundwork for the girls flag football movement across Pennsylvania.
Local schools have taken part in the Steelers’ Girls Flag Football League since 2022, a league that began with only six teams in its inaugural season and has since swelled to 36 participants. That league will continue for one more year before the PIAA takes over as the sport’s official governing body.
“We are excited to see such a groundbreaking moment for the future of girls’ flag football,” Steelers President Art Rooney II said in the release. “It has been great working with the Eagles to accomplish a successful ruling that will now give young girls the chance to compete at a state level. We look forward to seeing how girls’ flag football continues to grow in Pennsylvania and worldwide.”
In the first season of the Steelers’ Girls Flag Football League, Moon advanced to the championship finals before falling in double overtime against Shaler. Since then, the Tigers have rattled off back-to-back championship victories while steamrolling virtually every opponent in their path, cementing their place as the WPIAL’s standard bearer and the unquestioned team to beat.
“At Moon, there is a standard that we’ve set in that program. There is a standard of how we play and what we expect by the end of the season,” said Moon coach Jason Russell. “For [girls flag football] to get to the point where it is now, where so many schools are involved, and it’s a sanctioned sport — to see how it’s evolved, it’s amazing.”
The Tigers were one of the six founding members of the league, which has since expanded to include 32 WPIAL schools and four from the City League. Each year, the level of competition increases exponentially as players continue to develop their skills — and perhaps more importantly, learn the concepts and nuances of flag football that make the game so unique.
“Most girls in the state, they’re not growing up playing football. But they pick up on it faster than anybody I’ve ever seen,” Russell said. “Now, because of this [PIAA sanctioning], they’re probably going to start playing younger and younger. So that by the time they get to high school, they’re ready, just like any other sport.”
While Moon is already established as a perennial championship frontrunner, other schools joining the party are trying to make up for lost time while teaching a brand-new sport to players with little to no football experience.
For McKeesport coach Dino Interi, the 2024 season was a humbling yet gratifying experience. After being thrown into the fire as the Tigers’ head coach with only a short time to prepare for their debut season, the 26-year-old Interi and 25-year-old assistant coach Luke Johnson helped mold their players into a competitive bunch while showing plenty of promise for the future.
“I think, schematically, we were ahead of the curve, for sure. But having girls who were brand new to the sport against girls who had a little bit of experience showed,” Interi said. “A lot of people are like, ‘It’s just like real football.’ And I’m like, ‘No it’s not.’ You run, you throw and you catch the same, but everything else is different.”
Now, with the first WPIAL and PIAA championships on the horizon, teams will have one more year to get fully up to speed before making it official and competing under the PIAA banner. Until then, everybody else is chasing Moon, while the Tigers chase their championship three-peat.
“It’s all about the mentality our girls have and the example the players before them set,” said Moon coach Jason Russell. “We have hard practices, very intense practices. We take it very seriously at Moon. All the girls play their part and play their roles. They understand now that they won twice and that they’ve been in the championship all three years.
“But it’s a new season, and they know last year was last year, and it’s time to just move on and set goals for the upcoming year. But they’ll be ready.”
Steve is a sports writer at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he's currently on strike. Email him at srotstein@unionprogress.com.
