LAS VEGAS — Seventeen-year-old Maci Joncich sat in the bleachers at Coronado High School’s football stadium in Las Vegas on a spring day in April, her future in football crystalizing.

Joncich had recently become the youngest player to make the U.S. Women’s Flag Football National Team. While she had no doubts about where she was headed as she took a break from class, she reflected on how cloudy her football prospects once looked.

Just four years prior, Joncich’s options for role models in the world of flag football were slim and she was charting unexplored territory.

“The biggest point of discussion was, ‘What comes next with flag football?’” Joncich said. “When I started, there was no flag in college. There were no Olympics. It was a bit of a struggle at first just getting the motivation to keep playing.”

All that has changed because of the expeditious rise of the sport.

There are 11 states where flag football is sanctioned as a girls’ varsity high school sport. Women’s flag football scholarships are offered at 25 NAIA colleges, and five NCAA Division III colleges will follow suit in 2025. There aren’t currently options for boys or men beyond the club level, but there will soon be a professional option, as the American Flag Football League plans to launch the first men’s and women’s leagues in 2025. And, in perhaps the biggest news for the sport in the United States, flag football will become an Olympic sport in 2028 when the Summer Games return to Los Angeles.

According to USA Football, there were over 230,000 girls from ages 6 to 17 playing flag football in the U.S. in 2023, which marked a 44 percent increase from 2014. Including boys, there were over 1.6 million American youths playing flag football as of 2023. The sport is played in 100 countries around the world.

The NFL has also heavily invested in flag football. In May, the league hired Stephanie Kwok as its first vice president of flag football. The league hopes its growth will increase the number of women who watch and play the sport.

“All of a sudden, you see these opportunities to compete at the highest level,” Kwok said. “With the popularity of the WNBA right now and professional women’s sports as a whole, I think it’s really interesting to be thinking about what other opportunities there could be.

“You have so many girls who are playing flag football. … Now, they can see in a more real way what you can aspire to do knowing that there’s a path to the Olympics.”

A path for women like Joncich. After making USA Football’s final 12-player roster in June, the wide receiver/defensive back will compete in the 2024 International Federation of American Football (IFAF) Flag Football World Championship in August.

This summer, Joncich will enroll at the University of Florida, where she intends to play club flag football. She ultimately has her eyes set on representing the U.S. in the 2028 Summer Games in L.A. While she isn’t guaranteed a spot on the team, she now has a road map to follow.

“Before the Olympics, there hasn’t been a North Star for girls who participate in football,” said Sam Rapoport, NFL senior director of diversity, equity and inclusion. “And so, when you create that North Star, then there’s a flag pipeline for girls.”

A strengthened flag pipeline could open doors for women in football when it comes to playing, coaching and executive careers at the amateur, collegiate and professional levels.

“It creates a pathway for people,” Joncich said. “Not only for me, but for a lot of women.”

Brianna Hernandez-Silva had a winding path to flag football. She was a longtime baseball and softball player before a coach at Bonanza High School in Las Vegas convinced her to join the flag football team.

“I gave it a shot,” Hernandez-Silva said. “And it was probably the best decision I ever made. … It started out as a hobby, but it turned into something way more.”

Florida was the first state to sanction girls’ flag football as a varsity high school sport in 2003, but it took time to catch on elsewhere. It wasn’t until 2015 that Nevada became the second state to approve it.

There were still no college scholarships for flag football when Hernandez-Silva graduated in 2018, so she attended the College of Southern Nevada where she played softball. But when the NAIA added flag football in 2020, she transferred the following year to Kansas Wesleyan University to pursue it. Three years later, the defensive back/quarterback was named an alternate for the 2024 U.S. Women’s Flag National Team.

“The game itself has grown so much.” Hernandez-Silva said. “(The Olympics are) going to give the sport the credit it’s fought so hard to get for so long. And, eventually, everyone will start recognizing flag football as a sport that is moving very fast.”

As flag football has shifted from a recreational sport to one both athletes and fans take more seriously, the opportunities for youth and high school athletes to receive more specialized training have improved dramatically.

Last year, former Kansas Wesleyan coach Melinda Nguyen helped get Hernandez-Silva into USA Football’s The One Flag Championship, an annual, prestigious, invite-only tournament. Through that experience, she made the connections that led to her transferring to Keiser University (Fla.) in 2024. There, she played with fellow U.S. national teamers Kennedy Foster, Ashlea Klam and Brenna Ramirez, was a first-team All-Sun Conference selection at running back and appeared in the 2024 NAIA national championship game.

“I was able to compete at a higher level,” Hernandez-Silva said. “I’m very big on iron sharpening iron. … I was playing in tournaments almost every other weekend. I was traveling and playing on teams that had girls from the national team. I was able to make those connections and kind of grow my resume and who I am as a player outside of the collegiate world.”

As a girl, Kwok wanted to play organized football, but it’d be decades before such an opportunity emerged.

Raised in New York as the child of immigrants from Hong Kong, she wasn’t a huge football fan but grew interested in it after hearing classmates talk about it in school. Her only option in high school, however, was playing pickup football with friends. She went on to play intramural touch football as an undergrad at Stanford and had her first flag football experience on an intramural team at Harvard Business School.

When Kwok graduated and moved back to New York, she brought her newfound hobby with her. Over the next 10 years, she played in flag football leagues multiple times a week. She co-founded Pickup Football, an adult flag football tournament, and helped run it until the pandemic hit in 2020. She’d fallen in love with the sport and the camaraderie that came with it. In her new role with the NFL, she hopes to provide an avenue for girls and boys to play the sport and avoid having to wait as long as she did.

“There weren’t opportunities for me to play growing up,” Kwok said. “Now, I get to help shape how we increase accessibility.”

Kwok runs NFL FLAG, which is the league’s official flag football program. All 32 NFL teams participate, and the broad focus is on providing opportunities for athletes from age 4 to 17. The organization has over 600,000 participants and teams in all 50 states.

“I want everyone who wants to play flag football at every level to be able to do that,” Kwok said. “It’s just making sure they have that access and opportunity no matter who they are at every level of the game.”

NFL FLAG will host the NFL Flag Championships, a youth tournament, beginning July 18. For the first time, the 30-game showcase will be broadcast live on NFL+, ESPN and other Disney platforms. It’s yet another sign of the growing interest in the sport.

The @NFLFlag Championship kicks off in ☝️ week!

📅July 19-21
📍HERE in Canton, OH!
📺Watch on ESPN and ABC. pic.twitter.com/vQkGhiboID

— Pro Football Hall of Fame (@ProFootballHOF) July 13, 2024

The reasons for the NFL’s effort to grow flag football are multifaceted. From a health perspective, flag provides a safer alternative to tackle football. For youth athletes, it’s a way to learn the fundamentals of the sport without being subjected to violent blows to the head and other significant injuries that come with contact.

For Joncich, that process started when she joined the Apex Predators, a youth flag football club in Las Vegas. It provided exposure to coaches equipped to properly teach the sport. Club vice president Todd Thomson has coached both tackle and flag football at the high school, club and national levels. He knows as well as anyone that there are key differences between the two versions of football — for example, that there’s no contact or linemen in flag — but there’s still some overlap.

“To get on the field playing flag, you’ve got to have footwork,” Thomson said. “Obviously, in tackle, you’re working on blocking schemes, whereas in flag, you don’t have that. But the skill set, the athleticism, all the agility training that you do in flag directly translates over to tackle.”

The NFL also wants to improve its international reach. The league increased its number of international games to raise awareness of the sport around the world and has used the International Player Pathway program to discover and develop tackle football prospects outside of North America. The NFL believes flag football can drive interest in the sport on an international level.

While playing tackle football requires expensive equipment and 22 players, flag football doesn’t require as much of an investment — the only equipment needed is a football and flags — and it can be played in five-on-five and seven-on-seven formats. That makes it more widely accessible.

“This is the easiest, fastest and most cost-effective way to grow the sport,” USA Football CEO/executive director Scott Hallenbeck said. “You can scale it very quickly. I think the NFL is already seeing that both drive fandom and just drive general participation. … It’s just great for the game overall.”

Several NFL players have expressed a desire to compete in the 2028 Olympics, but that’d require a major adjustment. The NFL Pro Bowl shifted to a seven-on-seven flag football format in 2023, but it isn’t officiated as strictly as it would be in international competition. Teaching interested players to adjust to those rules is something the NFL and USA Football have discussed.

Who would you draft to play for your flag football team? @OmahaProd

Visit https://t.co/u9u8C2UgX8 to find a league near you pic.twitter.com/wlw4DmTwCJ

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— NFL (@NFL) July 15, 2024

“If a defender and an offensive player go up for a traditional end zone pass, it would be the perfect defensed play in the NFL, but if there’s the slightest contact, they’ll call the defender for a penalty,” Hallenbeck said. “It’s to the point where I’m on the international federation board and I’m like, ‘Guys, we’ve got to loosen these rules up a little bit.’ I mean, fans aren’t going to enjoy literally no contact.”

USA Football has worked with the U.S. Olympic Committee and sport performance experts to build a pathway to teach players of all ages the fundamentals, movement skills and biomechanics necessary to succeed in flag football.

Players with a background in flag and tackle football tend to be the focus — but they also draw athletes from other sports. As with any new competition, the 2028 Summer Games will serve as a high-stakes trial period for USA Football to refine its process.

IFAF has 74 member nations, and that number is expected to increase by the time the 2028 Olympics arrive. While it can be assumed that both the U.S. men’s and women’s teams will have a leg up on other countries less familiar with American football, there’s still plenty of work to be done when it comes to developing their talent pipeline. Canada, Mexico, Panama and Brazil are examples of other countries with elite flag football programs that’ll be fierce competition.

“We’re talking about now creating world-class athletes,” Hallenbeck said. “Four years scares me to death because it’s not long enough (to prepare competitive teams), but our job is to get that ready.”

The U.S. flag football national team during a training camp in May.

Despite the NFL’s efforts to grow the game internationally, football is still largely known as an American sport. But if the inclusion of flag football in the 2028 Olympics is a success, there’s a chance it could become a watershed moment for football’s worldwide presence — similar to how the 1992 Summer Games were a breakthrough for basketball via Team USA’s “Dream Team.”

The Olympics will put a spotlight on football in general. But given the men’s side of the sport is already massive, its effects could be greater for women.

“I refer to the announcement of the Olympics as rocket fuel,” Hallenbeck said. “It ignited something that was already burning and ready to take off. For a long time, girls have wanted to play football. They’ve done it here and there, but now the floodgates are truly open. … That side of things is scaling like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

The “Dream Team” had a dynamic superstar who captured a global audience in Michael Jordan. Looking ahead to the 2028 Games in L.A., those who’ve witnessed Joncich’s journey believe she could play a similar role for the women’s flag football team.

“When this is all said and done and those first Olympics happen, all these young girls are going to watch on TV and she will be that M.J.,” Thomson said. “She is the future. Barring something shocking, she’ll be the face of women’s flag football on the international stage.”

(All photos: Lester Barnes / USA Football)