An NCAA committee advisable on Wednesday including flag soccer to its rising ladies’s sports activities program, a big step towards it turning into an formally sponsored championship sport in all three divisions.
The NCAA mentioned no less than 65 faculties are already sponsoring flag soccer at both the membership or varsity degree, with extra transferring in that path. With a push from the NFL, flag soccer additionally has been added to the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Video games.
The NFL has vigorously promoted flag soccer for a number of years, together with beginning a worldwide ambassador program in 2022. Domestically, the league and its groups have been pushing for flag soccer to be sanctioned as a varsity sport in excessive faculties across the nation.
As soon as within the NCAA’s rising ladies’s sports activities program, flag soccer would wish a minimal of 40 faculties sponsoring it on the varsity degree and meet minimums in video games performed and participant participation to be thought-about for NCAA championship standing.
The NCAA’s rising ladies’s sports activities program was created to assist facilitate extra alternatives for girls and provides faculties extra alternatives to sponsor groups.
The final sport to maneuver by way of this system was ladies’s wrestling, which was authorised final month to grow to be the NCAA’s 91st championship sport. The primary ladies’s wrestling championship shall be held in 2026.
5 different sports activities are presently in this system: acrobatics and tumbling, equestrian, rugby, stunt and triathlon. 5 sports activities have beforehand emerged from this system to earn NCAA championship standing: rowing (1996), ice hockey (2000), water polo (2000), bowling (2003) and seaside volleyball (2015).
(Photograph: Isaiah Vazquez / Getty Pictures)
