‘It just opened up a whole other opportunity’

At one point in her life, recent Palumbo graduate Joy Luis couldn’t have envisioned running onto the NovaCare Complex field moments before her semifinal game in the Eagles girls’ flag football championship in early June.

Luis cultivated a passion for football starting at 5 years old. Like many kids growing up in and around Philadelphia, some of her earliest memories included sitting on the couch at home with family and watching Eagles games.

But Luis never thought that she would be able to put her passion in action on the gridiron.

“My mindset was really bad,” Luis said. “I was like, ‘Oh, football is a guy’s sport. I can’t play. I won’t ever have the opportunity.’”

Her attitude changed one year after the Eagles established their girls’ flag football league in 2022, which counted Palumbo among its 16 original participants from the Philadelphia Public and Catholic Leagues. Her friends on the team encouraged her to play, touting how much fun they had in their first season — and how many Eagles players they got to meet through various events, too.

My mindset was really bad. I was like, ‘Oh, football is a guy’s sport. I can’t play. I won’t ever have the opportunity.’

Three seasons into the Eagles girls’ flag football initiative, Luis is one of roughly 1,600 players on a total of 65 teams at eastern Pennsylvania schools. Pennsylvania boasts more than 100 teams, and it’s in a position to see continued growth as the PIAA board of directors in July approved a second reading on a bill to sanction the sport.

The Eagles’ involvement helped set the foundation for the sport to grow locally. The players seized the moment and turned it into something special, according to Dan Levy, the youth football and community relations manager for the Eagles.

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“They’re the ones that are making this game so strong,” Levy said. “They’re the ones that are advocating for themselves. Going to their ADs, finding opportunities, recruiting the other girls.

“So I just think that’s the most powerful part of this is that, yeah, we’ve provided them the opportunity. We’ve provided them equipment and the ability to play. But the inspiration is that they’re providing that to their other classmates.”

Before the launch of the league in 2022, the Eagles learned that providing the chance and the funding to play wasn’t enough to support girls’ participation.

The Eagles, inspired in part by the Atlanta Falcons and their success growing the game, approached Public League president Jimmy Lynch with their hope of starting a league for local high schools. Lynch was on board, but he sought the Eagles’ assistance in eliminating one of the barriers to participation facing female athletes in his district — the difficulty of attaining proper equipment, namely a sports bra.

Through conversations with female coaches, sport chairpersons, and athletic directors in the district, Lynch became aware of the need for girls to have access to sports bras to feel comfortable and confident in their athletic endeavors. Not only are sports bras an added cost, but they also can come with a stigma for young girls, Lynch says.

“Sports bras to so many people is like underwear,” Lynch said. “And it’s not. It’s a piece of equipment. It’s a very important piece of equipment.”

In general, access to sports for American girls and women is impacted by expenses such as equipment costs, according to the Women’s Sports Foundation. In a 2019 report, the organization found that girls from lower-income households were less likely to participate in two or more sports than girls of higher-income households. As a whole, girls lag behind boys in participation nationwide — 75% of boys participate in high school sports (46.6% in two or more) compared with 60% of girls (29% in two or more), according to a 2018 report.

The Eagles’ first solution to the problem was to purchase $100,000 worth of sports bras — roughly 6,000 — from Under Armour and donate them to Leveling the Playing Field, a nonprofit with a location in Sharon Hill that would distribute the bras among the students who needed one in the School District of Philadelphia.

But in order to make a continued, sustainable impact, the Eagles wanted to “plant a sports bra tree” with a partner who could run the program, Levy said. They sought out Operation Warm, a Glen Mills-based nonprofit that manufactures coats and shoes for children in need with which the Eagles had worked in the past.

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This project would require Operation Warm to expand to sports bras, a proposal that executive director Grace Sica said was an “easy yes,” seeing as it fit the organizational mission. Still, Sica explained that the program forced Operation Warm to broaden its definition of “need” in addition to socioeconomic status.

“We know that in Philadelphia, there are a lot of kids who are living in poverty or in low-income situations, and those are absolutely the children that we want to help,” Sica said. “Those are the girls that we want to equip. And also girls in every economic class participate in sports less than boys.

“So it kind of has expanded our idea of need, that we want all girls to play more sports because of the benefits it has for academic performance, better physical and mental health, and long-term professional performance.”

The Eagles and Operation Warm announced their partnership in early 2023, committing to manufacturing and distributing 30,000 sports bras to roughly 15,000 girls attending mid-to-high-need schools in Philadelphia that year. They celebrated the official launch of the initiative, called FLY:FWD, at a distribution event that fall at Northeast, which featured a panel discussion with Jalen Hurts, Carli Lloyd, Laila Ali, and Qiana “Star” Wright.

In the design process, Operation Warm focused on a sports bra as equipment, prioritizing function for playing high-intensity sports over fashion. Still, the woven, compression-style bras come in midnight green and white and feature the Eagles and FLY:FWD logos on the back. The parties utilized branding to stoke excitement about the initiative, Sica said.

After distributing the sports bras and giving the girls time to experience them, Operation Warm issued surveys to the recipients and the athletic directors at participating schools. They reported that 86% of athletic directors witnessed an increased interest in sports programs. All of the ADs said receiving sports bras made it easier to discuss the need for proper sports equipment with their female athletes.

Similarly, 83% of the girls agreed that receiving sports bras made them more interested in or more likely to play a sport. Eighty-seven percent of girls said receiving a sports bra would make them more comfortable playing sports and being active. The importance of comfort can’t be understated when it comes to flag football, according to Palumbo coach Chris Donnelly.

“The truth is that not having a sports bra is a difference-maker when you’re running down the field,” Donnelly said. “It really is. You can’t be holding on to the girls and trying to catch a football. I mean, that’s the bottom line. You cannot be doing that and be effective.”

One year after the inaugural season, the Eagles league expanded to 52 teams across Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Later in 2023, the PIAA designated girls’ flag football as an emerging sport, which required at least 25 PIAA schools participating.

By 2024, the Public League alone boasted 34 teams. The Public and Catholic Leagues designated girls’ flag football as an official sport, operating independently from the Eagles and hosting their own championships for the first time. While the Eagles provided the means necessary to get those teams off the ground, the girls and their interest propelled the sport to its current level of popularity.

“I think the coolest part about this league is that while I’ve certainly gone out and done lots of recruiting to try to get schools on board, that the schools that we’re seeing that are having the most success are the ones where the girls are going to their athletic director and saying, ‘I want flag football, and I’m going to go get my classmates to join the team,’” Levy said.

It was really cool, because most of the girls that came out didn’t play a school sport, so it just opened up a whole other opportunity for these girls that actually wanted to play a sport, and they chose flag football.

One of those schools was Lansdale Catholic, the winner of the inaugural championship in 2022. The majority of the players on that team had played for the Athena Warriors, a flag football program based in central Montgomery County that Tim and Katie Quinn started for their daughters in 2018. When news of the Eagles starting a league spread, the girls and the Quinns pushed for their school to create a team.

Girls who hadn’t played the sport previously have also taken to it. Mike Reimel, the former coach at Lansdale Catholic, joined Wissahickon with the intention of starting a girls’ flag football team in 2023. He posted flyers around the school to attract students to the first practice, hoping that 20 girls would show up. He drew over 50.

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“It was really cool, because most of the girls that came out didn’t play a school sport, so it just opened up a whole other opportunity for these girls that actually wanted to play a sport, and they chose flag football,” Reimel said.

With increased popularity, participation, and quality of competition has come increased opportunity for girls beyond the Eagles league. Some colleges, mainly in Division III, are beginning to offer flag football scholarships. The Eagles run a college showcase every August where they host up to 200 girls for an opportunity to be recognized by college coaches.

In addition to the college showcase, the Eagles also offer clinics for coaching and refereeing, providing another avenue for girls to grow the game. One of the middle Quinn daughters, Kara, no longer plays the sport, but she is now an assistant coach for Gwynedd Mercy, where her father, Tim, is the head coach and her sisters, Krista and Keira, played last season.

“I think that’s an even bigger feat, too, is just to continue to say, ‘Hey, look, you don’t just have to play,’” Katie said. “But here are some of the other things. Or let me work in my local community and help start a team. Or let me work with the local community team and keep that going. So I think that’s a bigger deal than anything else, because everything is just so much bigger than us.”

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The opportunities are proliferating beyond the Eagles ecosystem, too. This year, Big 33 hosted an all-star girls’ flag football tournament featuring teams from Pennsylvania and Maryland for the first time in its 67-year history.

Recent Archbishop Wood graduate Ava Renninger, the 2024 Catholic League MVP and Pennsylvania champion, was a member of the historic roster. She started playing flag football two years ago after her friends on her basketball team encouraged her to play. Even though she’ll pursue basketball in college at Fairleigh Dickinson, she appreciates the new opportunities associated with an up-and-coming sport like flag football.

“Some girls that may not play sports may pick up flag football, and it’d give them an opportunity at the next level and just have fun and have that team atmosphere that some girls don’t have,” Renninger said. “I think it’s something that schools should look at to add. And it’s just fun, and clearly it’s worked out for us.”

As an incoming freshman, Raniyah Bennett sought out Palumbo specifically for its flag football team, having played tackle for five years previously. As a sophomore quarterback last season, Bennett helped the team win the first Pub championship.

The semifinal game in June against Archbishop Wood wasn’t Bennett’s first time at the NovaCare Complex. Still, every time she takes the field at the Eagles’ practice facility with players like Jordan Mailata and A.J. Brown watching from the sideline, she said, she “can’t even believe” the support behind her to pursue the game to the highest level.

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“If I told my coach, if I can get a scholarship for this, that’s what I want,” Bennett said. “If I could go to college for this, this is what I want. If they could make a big-time league, that’s exactly what I want.”

Players like Bennett are encouraged to dream bigger with each successive opportunity. The most prominent stage for flag football to date is just four years away from making its debut — the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles will host men’s and women’s flag football events for the first time in its history.

Lynch said that he hopes to see local girls participate in the Olympics for years to come, and that possibility can only increase when more of them are exposed to the game. The PIAA’s potential ratification of girls’ flag football as an official sport is a recognition of the players’ buy-in and the optimism for continued growth.

“They recognize it’s blowing up,” Donnelly said. “And it’s you either get on the train, or the train’s leaving you at the station, is really what it is about this.”