“Sprint, drop, hip swivel,” Coach Brian Nunn shouts at his team, who is lined up on the field behind a set of cones on a Monday evening in late August. A football in each hand, Nunn corrects a player on her form before the drill starts: “Pigeon-toe that front foot,” he says. The whistle blows, and the girls sprint through the cones, pausing at each to squat to the ground or rotate their hips, deterring an imaginary defender from snatching their flag.
The girls’ varsity flag football team at Southern School of Energy and Sustainability is preparing for their upcoming season with an eye on the prize. For the first time, flag football is a sanctioned sport in North Carolina high schools, and Durham Public Schools has teams across the district vying for the first state championship.
“I have a lot of hope for us, and I just hope we come out here, work, and do what we gotta do to win these games,” said Southern junior Sa’myah Trice.
Flag football has seen a 50% growth in youth participants since 2020, with 4.1 million kids playing across the country, the NFL reported. At the high school level, participation has grown from fewer than 16,000 players nationwide in 2021 to more than 100,000 today. And at universities, the NCAA governing board approved funding in August to create a national championship for flag football as more schools create teams. As the sport surges in popularity nationwide, flag football will also make its Olympic debut at the 2028 games in Los Angeles.
The Carolina Panthers popularized flag football in North Carolina in 2022 when it launched a high school league in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. The Panthers have since expanded the program to more than 200 participating high schools and more than 3,000 athletes across North and South Carolina, including in Durham Public Schools (DPS). In May, the North Carolina High School Athletic Association (NCHSAA) voted to sanction girls’ flag football as a varsity sport, becoming the 22nd state to do so and adopting a national ruleset.
In Durham, girls are allowed to try out for tackle football, but it is uncommon, said DPS Director of Athletics David Hackney. Flag, which is strictly a women’s sport in DPS, is an opportunity to play the sport without the physicality, he said.
DPS launched its first flag football teams in 2023 and hosted a one-day showcase, called a “jamboree,” at Durham County Memorial Stadium in the spring of 2024. All six DPS high schools participated, in addition to teams from Vance County and Louisburg.
Hackney said the jamboree was a big hit, and it encouraged athletic directors across the district to invest in their schools’ teams.
“To watch the intensity of the game, to watch the excitement and the enthusiasm, was just unmatched,” Hackney said. “The energy in the entire stadium, not only from the ladies and the coaches, but to the community and the fans, it was just electric.”
It has taken a few years to figure out flag football in Durham. Prior to the sport becoming state-sanctioned this year, there were no formal rules. Southern senior Makayla Benjamin, who plays center, said referees would have her change her stance each game based on different rules that they each followed, and the refs would frequently have the teams redo plays.
The season has also been moved around—from spring, to an abbreviated season before winter sports kicked off, to the busier fall season. Now that the sport is played in the regular fall season, there’s a new challenge: finding a place to play. Southern’s practices are held on the softball field, for example, which is available since softball is a spring sport.
Riverside High School flag football coach Ryan Samuels said the sport feels much more organized this year.
“Last year, everyone’s learning as we go, and communication with the state wasn’t great,” Samuels said. “But it wasn’t state-sanctioned, so everyone was figuring things out on their own.”
The game will be played this year in four 12-minute quarters, which is the same as high school tackle football, Nunn said. Each team fields seven players who wear flags around a belt on their waist, and the offensive team has four tries to score a touchdown without the player in possession of the ball getting their flag pulled by a defender.
While Samuels and Nunn are both tackle football players and coaches by training, they’ve translated what they know to flag. In a sport where physicality is against the rules, Samuels said he teaches his players to be aggressive in different ways, in how they get to the ball and maneuver around defenders.
Southern High School senior Natalynn Snipes-Draine plays several sports, but she said she’s always wanted to play on a football team. Southern started its program her freshman year, and she joined the unofficial team and played in the jamboree.
“Girls playing on an actual football team—that’s looked at as different,” Snipes-Draine said. “But when flag football came, I was like, ‘I’ve always wanted to do this since I was in elementary school.’”
Some girls are looking beyond the high school level. Greyson Range, a senior at Riverside, is working on getting recruited to play flag football in college and has her eyes set on the Olympics.
Range said she saw the boys in her middle school playing tackle football, and she wanted to be a part of it; she liked that she was allowed to be more aggressive in football than she could playing soccer. Range joined the flag team her freshman year at Riverside, and after showing off her skills in—and helping win—the jamboree, a coach approached her and suggested she try out for tackle football.
Range played safety and punter on the junior varsity tackle football team her sophomore fall semester. Being the only girl on the team, she said it took some getting used to, but the discipline translated to her other sports and helped improve her skills as a flag football player the following spring.
Last year, when the flag season moved to the fall, Range had to choose between the two—one of her hardest decisions, she said.
But she knew flag football could help her get into college. The sport is taking off at universities, and the Durham County Stadium hosted a collegiate flag football championship in April. Many teams are launching inaugural seasons this fall, including North Carolina Central University, which hired a former NFL coach to lead the team.
Range has four offers so far from small schools across the country, including Guilford College in Greensboro, she said.
Range said her mom bought tickets for the two to watch flag football in the 2028 Olympics.
“She said, ‘The next time the Olympics come, you better be in it,’” Range said. “So I got big shoes to fill right now.”
Durham’s high school flag teams have been organizing workouts throughout the summer, and tryouts were held August 31. The first game is scheduled for September 9, and playoffs will run from the end of October until the state championship on November 14.
Snipes-Draine said Southern was a “super team” last year, making it to the second round of a playoff tournament between all of the DPS high schools. Much of that team graduated and there will be many new faces on the field this year. While Snipes-Draine said she’s confident in her team’s defensive skills, she hopes these early summer practices will help prepare them for a strong offensive season as well.
Now that it’s an official varsity sport, flag football teams will be competing in state-appointed conferences. Southern, Riverside, Northern High School, and Hillside High School will each play each other twice as part of their “Tobacco Road” conference games. Combined with out-of-conference games, Nunn expects to play about 18 games this season prior to state playoffs. Jordan High School is in a conference with Wake County schools and Durham School of the Arts will play similarly sized schools in Orange County.
Riverside won last year’s DPS high school championship, and Southern won the year before. This year, there will be an official state champion.
“We’re going big or going home,” Range said. “We’re going for a state championship. I want another ring.”
Samuels, Range’s coach, said he’s using the draw of the first-ever state championship to recruit new girls to the sport. Flag is artistic in the way that players move around the field, he said, and brings in a lot of girls who already play other sports.
“If you’re available in the fall, I’ll be able to equip you with things that you can take to your other sports that’ll allow you to excel there and be elite in all things athletically—not just football,” Samuels said.
He expects the Riverside team to have about 20 players this year. Because the sport is so new to Durham, he said he didn’t plan to make any cuts during tryouts as long as there are enough jerseys, acknowledging that many girls are playing the sport for the first time.
Nunn said many of his players at Southern are great athletes with backgrounds in basketball, soccer, and volleyball, but they didn’t grow up playing football—meaning they’re learning to catch passes and run routes around defenders for the first time.
“Catch the ball out in front, tuck it, and hand me the ball,” Nunn commanded at the August practice shortly before the school year started. With one spiral pass after another, the girls sprint across the softball field and attempt a running catch. Some miss the ball, prompting feedback from Nunn: “Don’t stop to catch it, run all the way through,” he says. But with each player who catches it, the team erupts in a cheer.
“The challenging part is, and which makes it the fun part as well,” Nunn said, “is teaching these girls a skill—something they’ve never really done before.”
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