After the Flag Championships led to July 2024, the NFL and the Arizona Cardinals introduced the subsequent step towards rising flag soccer: to broadcast and totally produce a women highschool flag soccer recreation of the week.
That point has now arrived.
The Cardinals, its stadium sponsor State Farm, and tv station Arizona’s Household introduced a partnership to supply and air a highschool women flag soccer recreation of the week for eight weeks throughout the season, they mentioned in a press launch.
The video games will air on Arizona’s Household Sports activities starting on Sept. 17 for the Hamilton Excessive College (Chandler, Ariz.) recreation towards Xavier Faculty Prep (Phoenix). The matchup may also be accessible to reside stream.
All video games will happen on Tuesday or Thursday nights by Nov. 7.
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“We firmly consider that native sports activities act because the connective tissue of a group,” mentioned Arizona’s Household VP and GM Debbie Bush in a press release. “This chance permits us to shine a light-weight on younger girls throughout Arizona who’re actually trailblazers within the sport of flag soccer whereas inspiring a brand new technology of younger women to consider that they’ll play too.”
It is a continuation of flag soccer progress in Arizona. The state is considered one of 12 to supply women flag as a sanctioned highschool sport; final season, 57 women participated. Greater than 100 colleges might be providing the game this 12 months, based on the press launch.
The Cardinals run camps and applications across the state and established a two-year partnership with Optimistic Teaching Alliance whereas pledging $70,000 to assist women’ flag soccer in efforts to deal with gender inequity in youth sports activities. In 2022 and 2023, the Cardinals hosted a Sport of the Week, with flag soccer video games performed at State Farm Stadium throughout halftime.
This season might be an enlargement from one recreation per season to eight.
“The expansion of flag soccer has been explosive not solely in our state and our nation however worldwide,” Cardinals proprietor Michael Bidwill mentioned in a press release. “As a company, we’re proud to assist develop the curiosity much more and shine a highlight on these competing at such a excessive degree in our personal group.”
The NFL is prioritizing efforts to ramp up flag soccer participation forward of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, throughout which the game might be performed on the Video games for the primary time. In July, the league hosted 2,800 athletes at Corridor of Fame Village for the NFL Flag Championships, a event wherein every staff was represented by its NFL counterpart from its hometown.
Final week, a partnership was introduced with the NFL and USA TODAY Sports activities, which might be releasing an inaugural Tremendous 25 women flag soccer rankings.
