LAS VEGAS — Seventeen-year-old Maci Joncich sat within the bleachers at Coronado Excessive Faculty’s soccer stadium in Las Vegas on a spring day in April, her future in soccer crystalizing.
Joncich had lately grow to be the youngest participant to make the U.S. Ladies’s Flag Soccer Nationwide Staff. Whereas she had no doubts about the place she was headed as she took a break from class, she mirrored on how cloudy her soccer prospects as soon as appeared.
Simply 4 years prior, Joncich’s choices for position fashions on the earth of flag soccer had been slim and he or she was charting unexplored territory.
“The largest level of debate was, ‘What comes subsequent with flag soccer?’” Joncich stated. “Once I began, there was no flag in school. There have been no Olympics. It was a little bit of a battle at first simply getting the motivation to maintain enjoying.”
All that has modified due to the expeditious rise of the game.
There are 11 states the place flag soccer is sanctioned as a women’ varsity highschool sport. Ladies’s flag soccer scholarships are provided at 25 NAIA schools, and 5 NCAA Division III schools will observe go well with in 2025. There aren’t at present choices for boys or males past the membership degree, however there’ll quickly be an expert choice, because the American Flag Soccer League plans to launch the primary males’s and girls’s leagues in 2025. And, in maybe the most important information for the game in america, flag soccer will grow to be an Olympic sport in 2028 when the Summer time Video games return to Los Angeles.
In response to USA Soccer, there have been over 230,000 women from ages 6 to 17 enjoying flag soccer within the U.S. in 2023, which marked a 44 % enhance from 2014. Together with boys, there have been over 1.6 million American youths enjoying flag soccer as of 2023. The game is performed in 100 nations around the globe.
The NFL has additionally closely invested in flag soccer. In Could, the league employed Stephanie Kwok as its first vp of flag soccer. The league hopes its progress will enhance the variety of ladies who watch and play the game.
“Abruptly, you see these alternatives to compete on the highest degree,” Kwok stated. “With the recognition of the WNBA proper now {and professional} ladies’s sports activities as an entire, I feel it’s actually attention-grabbing to be serious about what different alternatives there might be.
“You will have so many ladies who’re enjoying flag soccer. … Now, they will see in a extra possible way what you may aspire to do figuring out that there’s a path to the Olympics.”
A path for girls like Joncich. After making USA Soccer’s last 12-player roster in June, the broad receiver/defensive again will compete within the 2024 Worldwide Federation of American Soccer (IFAF) Flag Soccer World Championship in August.
This summer time, Joncich will enroll on the College of Florida, the place she intends to play membership flag soccer. She in the end has her eyes set on representing the U.S. within the 2028 Summer time Video games in L.A. Whereas she isn’t assured a spot on the group, she now has a highway map to observe.
“Earlier than the Olympics, there hasn’t been a North Star for women who take part in soccer,” stated Sam Rapoport, NFL senior director of variety, fairness and inclusion. “And so, whenever you create that North Star, then there’s a flag pipeline for women.”
A strengthened flag pipeline may open doorways for girls in soccer relating to enjoying, teaching and govt careers on the beginner, collegiate {and professional} ranges.
“It creates a pathway for individuals,” Joncich stated. “Not just for me, however for lots of ladies.”
Brianna Hernandez-Silva had a winding path to flag soccer. She was a longtime baseball and softball participant earlier than a coach at Bonanza Excessive Faculty in Las Vegas satisfied her to affix the flag soccer group.
“I gave it a shot,” Hernandez-Silva stated. “And it was most likely the very best choice I ever made. … It began out as a interest, but it surely become one thing far more.”
Florida was the primary state to sanction women’ flag soccer as a varsity highschool sport in 2003, but it surely took time to catch on elsewhere. It wasn’t till 2015 that Nevada turned the second state to approve it.
There have been nonetheless no school scholarships for flag soccer when Hernandez-Silva graduated in 2018, so she attended the Faculty of Southern Nevada the place she performed softball. However when the NAIA added flag soccer in 2020, she transferred the next yr to Kansas Wesleyan College to pursue it. Three years later, the defensive again/quarterback was named an alternate for the 2024 U.S. Ladies’s Flag Nationwide Staff.
“The sport itself has grown a lot.” Hernandez-Silva stated. “(The Olympics are) going to present the game the credit score it’s fought so exhausting to get for therefore lengthy. And, finally, everybody will begin recognizing flag soccer as a sport that’s shifting very quick.”
As flag soccer has shifted from a leisure sport to 1 each athletes and followers take extra significantly, the alternatives for youth and highschool athletes to obtain extra specialised coaching have improved dramatically.
Final yr, former Kansas Wesleyan coach Melinda Nguyen helped get Hernandez-Silva into USA Soccer’s The One Flag Championship, an annual, prestigious, invite-only match. By that have, she made the connections that led to her transferring to Keiser College (Fla.) in 2024. There, she performed with fellow U.S. nationwide teamers Kennedy Foster, Ashlea Klam and Brenna Ramirez, was a first-team All-Solar Convention choice at working again and appeared within the 2024 NAIA nationwide championship sport.
“I used to be in a position to compete at a better degree,” Hernandez-Silva stated. “I’m very huge on iron sharpening iron. … I used to be enjoying in tournaments nearly each different weekend. I used to be touring and enjoying on groups that had women from the nationwide group. I used to be in a position to make these connections and sort of develop my resume and who I’m as a participant outdoors of the collegiate world.”
“It was sort of our accountability to get the phrase out about flag soccer … and why it being on the collegiate degree was so necessary,” stated Brianna Hernandez-Silva. “We had been trailblazing.”
As a lady, Kwok wished to play organized soccer, but it surely’d be a long time earlier than such a chance emerged.
Raised in New York because the little one of immigrants from Hong Kong, she wasn’t an enormous soccer fan however grew concerned with it after listening to classmates speak about it in class. Her solely choice in highschool, nonetheless, was enjoying pickup soccer with buddies. She went on to play intramural contact soccer as an undergrad at Stanford and had her first flag soccer expertise on an intramural group at Harvard Enterprise Faculty.
When Kwok graduated and moved again to New York, she introduced her newfound interest together with her. Over the subsequent 10 years, she performed in flag soccer leagues a number of occasions every week. She co-founded Pickup Soccer, an grownup flag soccer match, and helped run it till the pandemic hit in 2020. She’d fallen in love with the game and the camaraderie that got here with it. In her new position with the NFL, she hopes to supply an avenue for women and boys to play the game and keep away from having to attend so long as she did.
“There weren’t alternatives for me to play rising up,” Kwok stated. “Now, I get to assist form how we enhance accessibility.”
Kwok runs NFL FLAG, which is the league’s official flag soccer program. All 32 NFL groups take part, and the broad focus is on offering alternatives for athletes from age 4 to 17. The group has over 600,000 members and groups in all 50 states.
“I need everybody who needs to play flag soccer at each degree to have the ability to try this,” Kwok stated. “It’s simply ensuring they’ve that entry and alternative irrespective of who they’re at each degree of the sport.”
NFL FLAG will host the NFL Flag Championships, a youth match, starting July 18. For the primary time, the 30-game showcase will probably be broadcast stay on NFL+, ESPN and different Disney platforms. It’s yet one more signal of the rising curiosity within 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— Professional Soccer Corridor of Fame (@ProFootballHOF) July 13, 2024
The explanations for the NFL’s effort to develop flag soccer are multifaceted. From a well being perspective, flag gives a safer different to sort out soccer. For youth athletes, it’s a technique to be taught the basics of the game with out being subjected to violent blows to the pinnacle and different vital accidents that include contact.
For Joncich, that course of began when she joined the Apex Predators, a youth flag soccer membership in Las Vegas. It supplied publicity to coaches geared up to correctly educate the game. Membership vp Todd Thomson has coached each sort out and flag soccer at the highschool, membership and nationwide ranges. He is aware of in addition to anybody that there are key variations between the 2 variations of soccer — for instance, that there’s no contact or linemen in flag — however there’s nonetheless some overlap.
“To get on the sector enjoying flag, you’ve bought to have footwork,” Thomson stated. “Clearly, in sort out, you’re engaged on blocking schemes, whereas in flag, you don’t have that. However the ability set, the athleticism, all of the agility coaching that you simply do in flag instantly interprets over to sort out.”
The NFL additionally needs to enhance its worldwide attain. The league elevated its variety of worldwide video games to boost consciousness of the game around the globe and has used the Worldwide Participant Pathway program to find and develop sort out soccer prospects outdoors of North America. The NFL believes flag soccer can drive curiosity within the sport on a global degree.
Whereas enjoying sort out soccer requires costly tools and 22 gamers, flag soccer doesn’t require as a lot of an funding — the one tools wanted is a soccer and flags — and it may be performed in five-on-five and seven-on-seven codecs. That makes it extra broadly accessible.
“That is the best, quickest and most cost-effective technique to develop the game,” USA Soccer CEO/govt director Scott Hallenbeck stated. “You may scale it in a short time. I feel the NFL is already seeing that each drive fandom and simply drive normal participation. … It’s simply nice for the sport total.”
A number of NFL gamers have expressed a want to compete within the 2028 Olympics, however that’d require a significant adjustment. The NFL Professional Bowl shifted to a seven-on-seven flag soccer format in 2023, but it surely isn’t officiated as strictly as it could be in worldwide competitors. Instructing gamers to regulate to these guidelines is one thing the NFL and USA Soccer have mentioned.
Who would you draft to play in your flag soccer group? @OmahaProd
Go to https://t.co/u9u8C2UgX8 to discover a league close to you pic.twitter.com/wlw4DmTwCJ
— NFL (@NFL) July 15, 2024
“If a defender and an offensive participant go up for a standard finish zone go, it could be the proper defensed play within the NFL, but when there’s the slightest contact, they’ll name the defender for a penalty,” Hallenbeck stated. “It’s to the purpose the place I’m on the worldwide federation board and I’m like, ‘Guys, we’ve bought to loosen these guidelines up just a little bit.’ I imply, followers aren’t going to get pleasure from actually no contact.”
USA Soccer has labored with the U.S. Olympic Committee and sport efficiency consultants to construct a pathway to show gamers of all ages the basics, motion abilities and biomechanics crucial to reach flag soccer.
Gamers with a background in flag and sort out soccer are typically the main focus — however in addition they draw athletes from different sports activities. As with every new competitors, the 2028 Summer time Video games will function a high-stakes trial interval for USA Soccer to refine its course of.
IFAF has 74 member nations, and that quantity is anticipated to extend by the point the 2028 Olympics arrive. Whereas it may be assumed that each the U.S. males’s and girls’s groups may have a leg up on different nations much less acquainted with American soccer, there’s nonetheless loads of work to be carried out relating to growing their expertise pipeline. Canada, Mexico, Panama and Brazil are examples of different nations with elite flag soccer applications that’ll be fierce competitors.
“We’re speaking about now creating world-class athletes,” Hallenbeck stated. “4 years scares me to dying as a result of it’s not lengthy sufficient (to arrange aggressive groups), however our job is to get that prepared.”
The U.S. flag soccer nationwide group throughout a coaching camp in Could.
Regardless of the NFL’s efforts to develop the sport internationally, soccer continues to be largely often known as an American sport. But when the inclusion of flag soccer within the 2028 Olympics is successful, there’s an opportunity it may grow to be a watershed second for soccer’s worldwide presence — much like how the 1992 Summer time Video games had been a breakthrough for basketball through Staff USA’s “Dream Staff.”
The Olympics will put a highlight on soccer usually. However given the lads’s facet of the game is already huge, its results might be larger for girls.
“I discuss with the announcement of the Olympics as rocket gas,” Hallenbeck stated. “It ignited one thing that was already burning and able to take off. For a very long time, women have wished to play soccer. They’ve carried out it right here and there, however now the floodgates are actually open. … That facet of issues is scaling like nothing I’ve ever seen.”
The “Dream Staff” had a dynamic famous person who captured a worldwide viewers in Michael Jordan. Looking forward to the 2028 Video games in L.A., those that’ve witnessed Joncich’s journey consider she may play an identical position for the ladies’s flag soccer group.
“When that is all stated and carried out and people first Olympics occur, all these younger women are going to look at on TV and he or she will probably be that M.J.,” Thomson stated. “She is the long run. Barring one thing surprising, she’ll be the face of ladies’s flag soccer on the worldwide stage.”
(All pictures: Lester Barnes / USA Soccer)
