After Seahawks assist, WA girls flag football players eager to grow sport

RENTON — On Thursday, Tosia Jaszczak Follehr sat on a stage at the Virginia Mason Athletic Center and answered a question from Seahawks wide receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba. Jaszczak Follehr is a senior captain of the Woodinville High School girls flag football team, which won a club state championship last winter.

Once, so much of the preceding paragraph would have seemed impossible.

“How did y’all get interested in football, and when did that passion and love start?” asked Smith-Njigba, surrounded by Jaszczak Follehr’s teammates in the first few rows of the VMAC auditorium.

“I was a cheerleader, so I’ve always watched the sport from the sideline,” said Jaszczak Follehr, repping a white jersey with the No. 4 and one word — FALCONS — splashed across the front. “So it was a really amazing opportunity to actually get on the field and play. I always yelled it from the sideline: ‘Get me on that field. I’ll show you how it’s done.’

“And then I actually got a chance to do it, which not a lot of girls can say.”

Yet.

Girls flag football was sanctioned by the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association on April 21, becoming the first new WIAA sport since girls bowling was introduced in 1999. Washington is the 15^th state to sanction girls flag football at the high school level. According to the National Federation of High Schools, participation has more than doubled nationwide, from 20,875 in 2022-23 to 42,955 in 2023-24.

But there was no guarantee that would happen here.

After all, a proposal to sanction the sport in Washington failed a year ago, receiving less than half of the total vote (26 in favor, 27 opposed). Last week’s proposal received 22 of 35 votes (62.9%) from the WIAA Representative Assembly, exceeding the 60% minimum threshold by a microscopic margin.

“It literally, from what we could tell, came down to the last vote,” WIAA executive director Mick Hoffman said. “It was the timing of it. It’s not that our schools don’t believe in it. It’s just that there’s some logistical and financial constraints that they’re facing. That’s the importance of the partnership with the Seahawks.”

Since 2021, the Seahawks have provided more than $381,000 in grant funding to help launch more than 100 high school girls flag football teams across the state, according to a news release. The team recently committed an additional $200,000 for 2025.

Even so, complications in sanctioning the sport went beyond the bottom line. Hoffman explained that doing so “puts pressure on our schools to offer it once it’s sanctioned. So for some schools, especially our small schools who maybe could barely field one sport as it is, they might only have 10, 11, 12 girls in their entire school.

“So we had to do a lot of communicating with them to [help them] understand, ‘Let’s not take the opportunity away from those that can just because some may not.’ And our schools embraced that.”

Which brings us back to Thursday, when the Falcons were embraced by Smith-Njigba and others hours before the beginning of the NFL draft. In their second season last winter, Woodinville High had 17 girls on varsity, a number that’s expected to grow in the near future. They filled the first three rows of the auditorium, led by coach (and Spanish teacher) Kathryn Schramm.

“I was raised on watching the Seahawks every Sunday … Monday … Thursday,” senior captain Hailey Anthony said. “Being part of this community is just so amazing.

“We have a fair at school where all the teams sit and [say], ‘If you want to sign up, come to the info meeting.’ This year we had 90 girls sign their names. We didn’t end up with a team of 90, but I think having it be an official sport now, maybe we’ll get to 90 next year.”

Hoffman agreed that “we anticipate it growing rapidly, similar to what we’re seeing with girls wrestling.”

That growth goes beyond the prep level. Men’s and women’s flag football will make its Olympic debut in Los Angeles in 2028. The NAIA introduced women’s flag football for its colleges in 2020 as well.

And in February, the NCAA recommended that its divisions add flag football to the NCAA Emerging Sports for Women program. If added, 40 schools would have to sponsor the sport at the varsity level, while meeting other contest/participation minimums, for it to be considered for championship status.

Since the Emerging Sports for Women program was established in 1994, six sports have achieved championship status: rowing (1996), ice hockey (2000), water polo (2000), bowling (2003), beach volleyball (2015) and wrestling (2025).

Suddenly there’s a pathway for flag football to redefine what’s possible.

“I’m playing next year. That’s all I have to say,” said standout sophomore running back Kai Brinkley when asked about her future in the 7-on-7 sport. “Hopefully by that time the NCAA will have it in college. I want to play in college. I want to hopefully take it professionally, so I really do see it in my future.”

As for the Falcons’ future? Next season, Woodinville will have more competition for the state’s first sanctioned flag football championship, a test the team welcomes.

After all, the game’s growth has been spurred by a shared sentiment:

Get them on that field. They’ll show you how it’s done.