NCAA’s Atlantic East presents a future for girls’s flag soccer. With NFL help and Olympics looming, what’s subsequent?

ARLINGTON, Va. — The wind is choosing up, the solar is starting to set and time is operating out for the Japanese Eagles and the Marymount Saints in what is going to go down because the first-ever convention championship on the NCAA varsity degree for girls’s flag soccer.

It’s halftime and the rating is tied 0-0. Japanese, who again in January began its program with simply six gamers, is proving to be a worthy adversary for undefeated Marymount. Simply earlier than the second quarter ended, the Saints have been knocking on the door of the endzone, however Marymount sophomore quarterback Cara Vollmer’s throw was intercepted by Damiyae Moyet. The Eagles’ junior defensive again practically housed the choose, taking it 60 yards earlier than her flag was yanked.

Halftime got here and went rapidly at Bishop O’Connell Excessive Faculty’s soccer stadium, a venue with no lights, however there was sufficient time for Japanese coach Amanda Ruller to provide her staff a quick speech, with the hopes that they may retain their momentum.

“Protection is placing in work at present. Preserve doing that. That is our sport. That is our time,” Ruller tells her squad that has grown to 16 gamers. “I anticipated this to be matchup and it’s. We’re placing a lot stress on them. Let’s maintain that up.”

Sadly for the Eagles, the Saints — who entered this sport having outscored their final 5 opponents 162-2 — discovered simply sufficient of an offensive stride within the second half. On the finish of the third quarter, Vollmer accomplished a brief five-yard dump move to Samantha Bulik, who evaded one would-be flag puller after which stretched the ball throughout the pylon as one other Eagle tore her flag out of its socket. The landing was good, and Marymount would rating as soon as extra within the fourth body to win the Atlantic East Convention Championship 12-0.

Whereas Bulik notched the vital game-deciding rating, Carly Rivera powered the Saints with 75 yards of whole offense on 12 touches. She additionally notched 5 flag-pulls on the defensive finish.

“After I was a child, I by no means thought I’d have the ability to play flag soccer previous highschool, and even then, it was extra of a secondary sport. So, to have the ability to play it in school is unreal. And it was actually probably the most enjoyable months I’ve had in a very long time,” Rivera tells SB Nation. “I believe it’s simply going to continue to grow. It’s going to begin right here after which I believe it’s rapidly going to take off on the NCAA degree. Subsequent factor you recognize, we’re going to be having type of a March Insanity.”

Assuming she would by no means have the ability to play flag soccer previous the youth degree, Rivera pivoted her focus at St. John’s School Excessive Faculty to different sports activities, like basketball. She went on to hoop at Columbia the place she would end prime 10 all-time in program historical past in assists and assist the Lions win their first-ever Ivy League title in 2023.

These days enjoying at Columbia have been particular for Rivera. However this, standing right here in near-darkness on a highschool soccer discipline whereas holding the Atlantic East Championship trophy for flag soccer, feels completely different. The sensation lastly units in as she watches a bucket of ice water get dumped on her father who’s the pinnacle coach. Rivera and the Marymount Saints will all the time be the primary champions of the primary NCAA convention to sponsor girls’s flag soccer on the varsity degree.

“I’ve no phrases for that. That’s one of many coolest emotions,” Rivera says. “We’re actually the primary ever to have achieved this. We simply needed to point out as finest we might that the game goes in a terrific course and there’s a future in it.”

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With the backing of the NFL and a global stage looming, flag soccer is booming and rising in leaps and bounds. It has typically been touted in recent times because the quickest rising sport on this planet. The NFL estimates that about 20 million individuals throughout 100 international locations are enjoying flag soccer or a variation of it. Within the U.S., the Nationwide Sporting Items Affiliation stated that from 2022 to 2023, ladies taking part in flag soccer elevated by 55 % to 1.6 million.

It’s spreading on the school degree too. Extra groups and extra conferences are including flag soccer, and there’s an actual chance that it turns into an NCAA-championship-level sport over the subsequent decade.

However regardless of the future holds for flag soccer, the Atlantic East — a Division III NCAA league based in 2018 made up of faculties in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Maryland and Virginia — will all the time be first. It was the primary NCAA convention to declare its intentions of constructing girls’s flag soccer a varsity sport, the primary to finish a full season at that degree, and the primary to carry a convention championship for it. In the identical approach that folks in girls’s basketball speak about Delta State and Immaculata as early groundbreakers, the Atlantic East and its groups must be referenced that approach because the historical past of girls’s collegiate flag soccer is recorded.

“We had buy-in from our presidents, our athletic administrators, our campuses, and that’s an enormous a part of it, with the ability to step up and do one thing for these student-athletes,” Rebecca Mullen, the interim commissioner for the Atlantic East, tells SB Nation. “There’s nobody else that may say that they did this, and these scholar athletes could have one of the crucial distinctive experiences.”

For the primary time ever, flag soccer — males’s and ladies’s — might be an Olympic sport when the Summer time Video games come to Los Angeles in 2028. The Worldwide Olympic Committee introduced the long run inclusion of the game in October 2023. A couple of months earlier than that information broke, the Atlantic East stated in a press launch that it was partnering with the NFL, the Philadelphia Eagles and RCX Sports activities with the hopes of changing into the primary NCAA convention to sponsor girls’s flag soccer on the varsity degree.

Final Saturday in Arlington, Virginia — the place Rivera hauled in passes and dodged flag-pullers in a blue No. 15 jersey — that dream turned a actuality.

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The 2024 season featured simply 5 club-level groups — Centenary, Cabrini, Immaculata, Marymount, and Neumann. For its debut varsity marketing campaign this yr, three extra colleges added groups — Japanese, Penn State Schuylkill, and Holy Household — whereas Cabrini closed on account of monetary struggles, bringing the Atlantic East to seven groups. They might play 7-on-7 guidelines, with discipline dimensions of 80-by-40 yards and 12-minute quarters with a operating clock.

Between its first proclamation that it was venturing into flag soccer and now, the Atlantic East modified commissioners. Jessica Huntley resigned after six years on the job in July 2024, and Rebecca Mullen has been the interim commissioner ever since. A former Division III athlete herself, Mullen performed lacrosse and discipline hockey at Worcester State, the place she graduated from in 2013 earlier than happening to acquire a Grasp’s diploma in Sports activities Trade Administration from Georgetown.

Mullen had been the assistant commissioner of the Atlantic East for a few yr when Huntley and the convention introduced its intentions to be the primary NCAA league to sponsor girls’s flag soccer on the varsity degree. Final Saturday in Arlington, her fingerprints have been everywhere in the championship as she met with referees earlier than video games, drove stakes into the bottom, then used that hammer to overwhelm the fabric on a desk that offered the championship trophies, after which cleaned up the press field and turned the lights out as one of many final individuals to depart the stadium.

When requested why the Atlantic East needed to be among the many first to have flag soccer within the NCAA, Mullen offers credit score to the convention’s universities who noticed the imaginative and prescient.

“There must be a buy-in for the financials. As a result of including a sport provides schedules, journey, all these sorts of prices,” Mullen says. “It’s rising a lot at excessive colleges and youth ranges across the nation, world wide, and it’s simply actually thrilling to provide them the chance for the subsequent step, and we’re excited so as to add to that.”

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When Marymount was beginning up its flag soccer program, it didn’t must look far for its first head coach and somebody who might construct the staff from the pavement up. Michael Rivera, an Arlington resident for 3 many years, coached flag soccer on the youth degree for 15 years and based the nationally-recognized Virginia Hurricanes program. He coached in eight NFL Flag Nationwide Championship tournaments and in 2022 was one in every of 5 coaches nominated for NFL Flag Soccer Coach of the 12 months. With the Virginia Hurricanes basketball groups, Rivera coaches alongside Katie Fudd, the mom of UConn star Azzi. The Fudds have been within the bleachers on Saturday in Arlington, with Tim Fudd main some fan chants.

“It was a chance I didn’t need to move up. And it was a chance to do one thing a bit of completely different,” Rivera informed SB Nation about teaching Marymount. “It simply made sense, as a result of it’s such a enjoyable sport, and it’s grown a lot prior to now 5 years on the women’ facet. I used to be optimistic it was going to be coming to school, after which when it did, I used to be actually excited to be a part of it.”

Most head coaches of collegiate sports activities don’t have to show their gamers the fundamentals of the sport. Basketball gamers enter school realizing methods to set screens and methods to shoot. Soccer gamers know what the offside rule is. Softball gamers know the distinction between balls and strikes.

However the gamers that make up Rivera’s staff at Marymount — and the groups throughout the Atlantic East — are sometimes converts from different sports activities. Most of them didn’t play flag soccer in highschool. And so, whereas Rivera can spot athletic means, expertise and talent, he nonetheless has to do a good quantity of instruction on the sport.

“That’s what made this actually fascinating. A number of our youth gamers are soccer gamers and basketball gamers, and we train them methods to play flag,” Rivera says. “We didn’t recruit — we didn’t have time to recruit flag soccer gamers. Now we have taken athletes at Marymount, transformed them into flag gamers, they usually’ve been super.”

One participant who knew the game nicely was Rivera’s daughter, Carly. She nonetheless had a yr of NCAA eligibility left following her time enjoying basketball at Columbia and had been hanging round Marymount’s basketball staff to get her repair for an athletic exercise and a few competitors. She’s going to medical college later this yr, so her father made a easy pitch to her earlier than the season began: “Why don’t you do one thing enjoyable earlier than you go to med college?”

Carly Rivera led the Saints in receiving, hauling in 53 passes for 600 yards and eight touchdowns. She additionally led the staff in flag-pulls with 54 and registered three interceptions.

“I’ve all the time liked flag soccer and I’ve simply been looking for methods to remain energetic and harness my aggressive facet. So, this was excellent. It was a bit of little bit of getting-back-on-the-bike,” Carly Rivera says. “My dad joked with me that it’s utterly modified from once I was a child, and he’s proper. I’ve all the time liked to tug flags, so I used to be very excited as soon as I remembered that I might nonetheless try this.”

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Amanda Ruller was working at Division II Central Washington College when she heard {that a} small non-public college within the northeast suburbs of Philadelphia, Japanese College, was beginning a varsity girls’s flag soccer program and in search of a head coach. She had success at Central Washington because the staff’s operating backs coach — teaching a 1,000-yard rusher and serving to the staff make the third spherical of the NCAA Match — however she needed one thing extra.

Whereas Ruller has a powerful resume — she’s coached in school soccer within the U.S. and Canada, and frolicked with 4 groups within the NFL and CFL — she felt like she was bumping her head towards a glass ceiling and stored being missed for extra prestigious jobs as a result of she’s a lady. So, when Japanese offered her with not simply the prospect to be the pinnacle coach, however to additionally construct a program from scratch in her imaginative and prescient, she jumped at it.

“It was a studying alternative for development,” Ruller informed SB Nation. “Out of all of the issues I’ve ever finished in soccer, it’s been difficult to maneuver up, as a result of there’s not quite a lot of girls being offensive coordinators or head coaches. This chance afforded me each of these alternatives. Now could be my alternative to really present what I can do in soccer on an actual stage, on an actual degree.”

Certainly, Ruller isn’t simply the pinnacle coach of Japanese’s flag soccer staff. She’s additionally its offensive coordinator. She’s additionally the play-caller and scheme-designer. She constructed this program from nothing as its chief architect. There was an even bigger calling and far more accountability right here than had she simply gone to a different school to be a positional coach for the lads’s deal with staff.

After a bumpy begin by starting the season with back-to-back losses, the Eagles went on to win 12 of their subsequent 14 video games with their solely losses coming to Marymount. Alongside the best way, Ruller was instructing the finer factors of flag to her gamers she transformed from different sports activities, she was tweaking play designs and making an attempt gamers at completely different positions, and she or he was operating the staff’s social media accounts too.

By way of the Invoice Walsh Fellowship program within the NFL a couple of years in the past, Ruller set to work with the Seattle Seahawks and beneath then-head coach Pete Carroll. That’s when she knew she too needed to be a head coach and has been pursuing the prospect to steer and mould her personal staff ever since.

“(Carroll) really confirmed me what a head coach seems to be like on the highest degree doable, and I knew at that very second that I needed to be identical to him,” Ruller says. “I really take all of these practices that he confirmed me — from operating a staff assembly to putting in a philosophy to making a staff — into my staff. I do every part the very same, and I really feel prefer it has fostered these ladies right into a unit.”

Ruller was one in every of simply two head coaches which can be girls within the Atlantic East this season. Her hope is that as flag soccer expands within the school ranks, it presents extra alternatives for girls to get into and advance in teaching soccer.

“The query isn’t if, the query is when, proper? When is that this going to department out to an even bigger stage? Now, we’re on the smallest stage doable, and I’m so excited, as a result of each step we’re taking goes to make it larger and greater and greater,” Ruller says. “Finally, each (NFL) staff goes to have a sister staff. The query isn’t whether or not girls belong anymore. The query is, the place can we place them? As a result of they’re right here to remain.”

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At the moment, 15 states have formally sanctioned ladies flag soccer as a highschool sport and 17 others have introduced pilot applications. Mississippi and Washington have been the newest states to sponsor the game at the highschool degree. USA Immediately even launched a prime 25 rating for one of the best highschool groups all through the nation.

However as the game barrels towards its debut on the worldwide stage on the 2028 Summer time Olympics, Michael Rivera believes there may be extra work to be finished.

“We nonetheless want extra of it on the highschool degree,” Rivera says. “It’s very fascinating on this nation the place you will have states which have had flag soccer for 10 years, or states like California and Florida with 300 highschool groups enjoying, after which you will have some states the place it’s not even a sport. That’s an important factor, after which getting the universities on board so we get a important mass, in order that it turns into sanctioned within the NCAA, in order that we will have our March Insanity or April Insanity event. We’d like schools so as to add it to allow them to get the numbers.”

On the school degree, a handful of Division I colleges have began groups, together with Mount St. Mary’s and Alabama State. Extra conferences will play full varsity seasons subsequent yr too, together with the Empire 8 (D3), Convention Carolinas (D2) and United East (D3). The CIAA — a Division II convention made up of HBCU applications — held a event this yr, however not a full season.

Again in February, flag soccer made a major stride in gaining floor within the school ranks when the NCAA beneficial including it to its Rising Sports activities for Ladies program. Since its inception in 1994, this system has had success in changing sports activities like rowing, ice hockey, water polo, bowling and seashore volleyball into varsity girls’s sports activities throughout the NCAA. Most not too long ago, girls’s wrestling was granted widespread varsity standing and the NCAA will host the game’s first sanctioned championship subsequent yr.

Ought to flag soccer be granted standing within the Rising Sports activities for Ladies program on the 2026 NCAA conference, there’s nonetheless a methods to go earlier than followers see one thing like an NCAA Match for the game. At the moment, based on the NCAA, about 65 colleges have flag soccer groups on the varsity or membership degree, however to be thought of for championship standing no less than 40 NCAA applications might want to sponsor girls’s flag soccer as a varsity sport inside 10 years. These 40 groups would even have to fulfill minimums in video games performed and participant participation.

“The NCAA discussing it as an rising sport and type of transferring in that course actually does assist our establishments see the subsequent steps,” Mullen says. “Now, we wish there to be extra of a championship expertise with these subsequent steps. And quite a lot of that comes from individuals having conversations, constructing applications.”

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Heading towards the Olympics, the NFL is closely invested in seeing the game develop in any respect ranges — from youth, highschool and school, all the best way to a possible professional league. The NFL ran commercials selling flag soccer in the course of the Tremendous Bowl and Eagles’ quarterback Jalen Hurts appeared in an advert teasing the game’s inclusion within the 2028 Summer time Video games. The NFL has additionally made the flag soccer pivot with its Professional Bowl and a whopping 4.7 million individuals tuned into the 2025 sport, matching the viewership of this yr’s NBA All-Star Recreation.

In March, Entrance Workplace Sports activities reported that the NFL was fielding curiosity from potential enterprise companions to discovered knowledgeable flag soccer league. The NFL even had WNBA celebrity Caitlin Clark and tennis legend Serena Williams take part in a panel dialogue concerning the sport. Based on Chiefs’ proprietor Clark Hunt, at one level in the course of the panel, Clark stated, “If flag soccer was round once I was rising up, I may not be a basketball participant.” Williams and her husband have emerged as potential buyers in a flag soccer league.

“It’s going to go like wildfire in Division II and ultimately Division I,” Ruller says. “There’s going to be tons of NIL offers concerned on this and ladies are going to go nuts.”

With the NFL backing it, with the NCAA exploring it and with people with deep pockets aiming to spend money on it, the long run for flag soccer appears to be vivid.

And wherever the game goes, the Atlantic East will all the time have been first.