Gone are the days of males dominating the gridiron on their own.
A new era of sports in Mississippi has arrived, as it became the 14th state to create a girls flag football league through the collaborations of the Mississippi High School Activities Association and the New Orleans Saints.
"We are thrilled to partner with the MHSAA and bring the excitement of girls flag football to the state of Mississippi," Gayle Benson, owner of the New Orleans Saints, said in a released statement. "This is just the beginning, and we look forward to seeing the league grow, offering more young women the chance to experience the joy and empowerment that sports bring."
South Pike and McComb were among a dozen schools that fielded teams in the sport’s pilot season this spring, and they competed within the “Saints Black” division that also featured Brandon, George County, Oak Grove and Richland.
With this being the inaugural campaign, there were obviously plenty of learning experiences and bumps to smooth out.
To that point, the league does not even have its own rule book as of yet, with it currently being in production for next year’s season. Thus, the teams followed standard Louisiana High School Football rules, with some modifications.
But despite the newness of it all, the founding schools will be remembered as the original flag football teams in Mississippi, and the willingness to give the sport a shot is paying off.
“The girls love it, the coaches love it, and it’s been really competitive,” LeAnna Dawson, Assistant Director of the MHSAA, said. “These schools have gone on this journey with us by learning all this stuff for a pilot season. So they really took a leap of faith, and they’ll historically be the first 12 teams to do it.”
Each team took part in a five-week campaign that began on March 27, with game locations alternating between Southwest Mississippi Community College and Picayune High School given the sites’ proximity to the participating schools.
The season concluded with “Championship Saturday,” which was played May 10 and pitted the top teams from each division against each other in a playoff-style bracket.
Nike was also generous enough to donate a $100,000 product grant that paid for the teams’ uniforms and necessary equipment. That meant that the only out-of-pocket expenses the schools had to account for were travel costs.
“We have to give a lot of thanks to Nike and the Saints for funding this,” Dawson said. “It was a big help for our schools to not have to buy equipment, because Nike provided the product grant for this and really worked with them.”
The reviews from the participating schools were more than positive. With coaching staffs made up of individuals who usually work in other sports, it gave the coaches a chance to experiment with something new.
“It’s been amazing to see the girls out here competing in another sport, especially against a cross-town rival,” Marquis McFarland, head coach of McComb, said following his team’s game against South Pike. “I’m really having fun with this, and it’s exciting to see the girls playing with passion and emotion.”
And from the Lady Eagles bringing their entire band along to various cookouts popping up outside the stadiums, the local community frequently showed that it is all-in on this new sport.
The vibrant atmospheres created some compelling games, as teams ran everything from double-reverse passes, to jet sweeps and even RPOs. The frequency of game-changing plays like pick-sixes and lengthy touchdown runs also showed that there are plenty of high-caliber female athletes in the region.
South Pike and McComb’s squads were especially well-drilled, but the Lady Eagles notably came out on top in the teams’ lone meeting of the season, claiming a 12-2 win in early April.
They ultimately went on to finish atop the "Saints Black" division with a 4-1 overall record.
“I’m just super excited for the girls because they had always wanted to play football,” Latonja Lenard, South Pike’s head coach, said. “For so long it was just the boys’ sport, but now they have the opportunity to play it.”
Both Lenard and McFarland said they had to go through an educational period with their teams early in the season, teaching the various rules and intricacies of football to those that had little prior knowledge.
But once that was out of the way, each coaching staff was able to expand their playbook and let the players have more freedom on the field.
“The first two weeks, I kept it basic with running the same set of plays in two formations,” McFarland said. “But then they started to grasp that, so I was able to incorporate a lot more stuff.”
In the long run, Dawson hopes that girls flag football can reach the same level of structure as every other sport in the MHSAA, and she explained that the impact of this league will be felt even when the athletes are all grown up.
“The ultimate goal is to have seven classifications with seven titles. We really want to keep growing this sport,” Dawson said. “Because these are future mothers, grandmothers and aunts to little boys, and they’ll be able to say football is okay because they played it."
To start, Dawson hopes to establish a set rule book, and if more schools opt to join, she foresees combining the 1-3A and the 4-7A classifications in separate leagues as the next step.
Flag football will also be an officially sanctioned event in the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, which is just another example of the sport’s worldwide growth.
