BY DANIEL SCHMIDT
THE OBSERVER
LEE COUNTY — On a humid summer evening at Beauregard Park, a small group of girls gathered on the multipurpose field.
Around them were orange and blue cones, a pile of flagged belts and a handful of coaches who had pre-prepared drills.
For two hours, they ran drills, practiced catching and throwing and played run sharks and minnows until their motions became a blur of backpedaling and cutting across a field that, until a couple of years ago, none of them would have set foot on.
They slowly trickled in from Beauregard, Opelika, Auburn, Smiths Station, Phenix City and as far as Columbus.
Some will go on to try out for their high schools, some will play for local rec teams and others, like 10-year-old Ariel Palm, figure they’ll eventually stick with other sports such as softball.
But on this night, all of them were learning to play flag football.
What started two years ago as a handful of girls tagging along with a long-running boys’ program has become what organizers describe as a developmental summer camp and, increasingly, a pipeline.
“Oh, they love it out here, man,” said Joshua Stroud, the Beauregard Sports Association’s flag football director. “We were gentle with them last year because it’s a new sport, and we didn’t want to scare them away and get aggressive with them. But we’ve been more disciplined this year, and they’ve taken to it. They just want some structure. They want to get better, they want to work hard and they want to get out here and do what the boys do.”
The numbers tell the story better than almost anything.
A year ago, the camp drew an average of 10 or 12 girls a night. This summer, the nightly average is around 30, and that’s with routine participants’ families going on vacation.
The full season last year pulled in roughly 70 girls across five teams, and Stroud said he expects to be able to build six this year.
The growth has been deliberate and somewhat improvised.
The girls’ camp grew out of an existing boys’ operation, with the same coaches also running flag football and basketball to give newcomers familiar faces when beginning a sport most have never tried.
“It’s a new sport, and they don’t know if they like it or not,” Stroud said. “So they come out here and try it, and them coming back tells me they like it. We just have to find a way to get that on paper and get them in the system.”
To reward camp participants’ efforts with more competitive games, Stroud said he wants to pair with teams in LaFayette, Lanett, Russell County and elsewhere that also offer the girls a fair, level playing field.
They are also looking at providing more vibrant uniforms after players did not resonate with the NFL team identities and colors last year.
This upcoming season, the coaches are building six homegrown teams with roughly eight players apiece that have original names, colors and slogans.
“You know how it is with girls,” Laderious Heard, an assistant coach, said while laughing. “They just want to pop. They want that fashion statement and something they can wear to the store together.”
Getting girls active
While the neon jerseys are expected to be a welcome addition, the appeal of flag football goes much deeper for parents, family members and the players themselves.
According to Tyesha Hart, who brought several of her nieces to the June 22 session, there are numerous physical and social benefits.
“It’s a sisterhood for one, and then just being a part of the community,” Hart said. “They love running up and down the field, especially with football being a male-dominated sport. They can come out here and hang with the bulls.”
She added that for multi-sport athletes, the camp fills a gap and gives girls the opportunity to stay active between their main seasons.
There are also other summer benefits that parents can recognize: getting the girls off their phones and preventing them from disappearing into a screen-lit summer fog.
“Most kids lose themselves during the summer, and it takes them a while to get back into social mode,” Hart said. “It’s good just keeping them well-rounded.”
When asked about what she would tell parents still on the fence about letting their child participate, Hart’s pitch was about as direct as it gets.
“Come, because when they started, it may have been just 12 kids,” Hart said. “Now we’ve got kids from Opelika, Phenix City and Beauregard, and they’re welcoming kids from all over. It’s a great thing, and it’s going to get bigger and better.”
The players’ own reviews are telling.
Kyleia Thomas, 12, came out to get more athletic and try something new, and she’s walked away convinced she’s done both.
“It was easier than I thought,” Thomas said. “My favorite things are when we do [the tackling drill] sharks and minnows, and when we do back pedals and stuff like that. So I think I’m being more athletic.”
Palm gave a similar answer.
“I want to get more athletic and just make a difference,” Palm said. “I like trying out new sports and stuff like that.”
The camp’s timing could hardly be better since girls’ flag football is the fastest-growing emerging sport in American high schools.
Flag football’s increasing popularity
According to the most recently available National Federation of State High School Associations data, 68,847 high school athletes nationwide played girls’ flag football during the 2024-25 school year.
That number represented a 60% increase from the previous school year and a 388% increase from when the NFHS began tracking participation during the 2021-22 school year.
Alabama is squarely in the middle of the boom.
Several area high school teams have garnered widespread acclaim, with Central High School winning numerous state championships in recent years and routinely being ranked in the top 10 nationally by MaxPreps and USA Today.
Other schools, including Auburn High School, Opelika High School and Smiths Station High School, routinely compete in the playoffs.
The craze has also led to the creation of new programs across East Alabama.
In Chambers County, LaFayette High School has begun preparations to play its inaugural season this fall, and in Lee County, Glenwood School is starting its own team.
The decision to start a program this fall was not made lightly, according to Glenwood athletic director Tim Fanning.
Numerous discussions with former Head of School Jim Davidson and current Head of School Jacob Johnson eventually led to the school letting its female athletes know flag football could be an option for them.
The response was immediate and overwhelming.
“Basically, we just put it out as an interest meeting, and as soon as we saw the number of girls who showed up and were asking questions, we felt like it was something we needed to try to do,” Fanning said. “It gives them another avenue to represent our school, and that’s the biggest thing for me.”
By Fanning’s estimate, nearly 75% of female students at Glenwood already play one sport, and many of the girls who made the inaugural team already play at least one other sport.
However, he said that flag football has also attracted some newcomers who do not already participate in athletics, showing that the draw extends to more than those already athletically inclined.
With the team taking the field for the first time on Aug. 26 at home against Opelika High School, Fanning said his evaluation will run much deeper than just wins and losses.
“I think the biggest thing is to make sure that we’re organized, provide them with great instruction and have the expectation of how they carry themselves, how hard they play and how they represent the school,” Fanning said. “Sports are the greatest teacher of life, and that doesn’t change whether it’s flag football, softball or volleyball. We have that expectation from our coaches and our players.”
As the game grows at the high school level, the opportunities stretch well beyond Wednesday and Thursday nights, too.
Alabama State University is fielding the first Division I-sanctioned women’s flag football team at the HBCU level, and the sport is on track to be featured at the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
Those new opportunities are the quiet promise beneath all those drills: every girl learning to backpedal, catch and tackle could be several years away from a life-changing opportunity.
Playing after high school
With an abundance of options emerging for young women to continue playing, collegiate players like Brooke Hallman are hoping more will pick up the sport.
Growing up, Hallman grew up in what she characterized as a “huge football family” and watched her older brother play on Friday nights.
When Eufaula High School first offered girls the opportunity to play flag football during her freshman year, she jumped at the opportunity to try out for the team.
However, even though she quickly found her home between the painted white lines, flag football was still new enough at the time that most of her peers did not know what to make of it.
“It was a sport that was weird for girls to play, and we were kind of judged in a way,” said Hallman, who now plays both basketball and flag football for the University of North Alabama. “But now it’s starting to be an actual sport that people look up to.”
Not long after that, she transferred to Auburn High School, where she became a standout player for the Lady Tigers and helped lead the team to the 2022 state championship her sophomore season.
According to Hallman, that title run only solidified her love for the sport and helped power her through successful junior and senior campaigns that ultimately allowed her to play at the next level.
She said she now believes the misconceptions about the girls’ game are fading.
“I think just the name football kind of has a manly sense behind it,” Hallman said, adding that some girls were initially hesitant to try out because of that. “It’s just a sport and something I found fun.”
With the sport continuing to grow at a fast pace, she said she sees flag football opening doors that did not exist for women a few years ago, chief among them scholarships.
She expects the college ranks to expand quickly.
“I could almost bet you that in another four years, most Power Five schools will probably have a flag football team,” Hallman said. “It’s a great opportunity for women to show their ability.”
Her advice to the younger girls now picking up the sport comes down to one word: consistency.
“At the end of the day, for any sport you want to play or anything you want to do in life, consistency is the biggest thing,” Hallman said. “If you’ve got that, then you’re always going to put in the hard work. That’s what’s going to set you apart.”
Mostly, she said she just hopes more girls simply give the sport a shot.
“There are a lot of young girls who are too scared to get out of their comfort zone and try something new,” Hallman said. “It’s not just a sport you play in high school just for fun anymore. It’s something you can really base your career on.”
