Credit: CP Illustration: Jeff Schreckengost

While the Penguins, Pirates, and Steelers are the teams Pittsburghers are the most likely to be cheering for, there is another sport on the rise in the Steel City: flag football.

The Pittsburgh Flag Football League was founded in 2009 as a light-hearted weekly pastime for adults. Pittsburgh Flag Football League executive director Chris Curd says the league has since expanded to include youth and high school girls.

“Having my background and experience both at the collegiate level and professional level, I realized that most guys were not fortunate enough to kind of get any sort of experience in playing football beyond the high-school level,” Curd tells Pittsburgh City Paper. “And so we started the league as a way to kind of provide recognition for just the average guy.”

Curd knows firsthand that a love of football can take you many places. Although he’s originally from Youngstown, Ohio, obtaining a football scholarship in 1999 brought him to the University of Pittsburgh, and ultimately to a stint in the National Football League playing for the Atlanta Falcons.

In the league’s early days, there were nine teams of adult men playing for the joy of it, but, as interest grew, the league expanded in 2011 to include kids, which meant playing and practicing at four different locations. Curd recalls that, at the league’s peak, it included 34 teams, but, as with many things when the pandemic struck, participation flatlined. Fortunately, Curd says, when restrictions eased, there were many parents eager to get their children involved in outdoor activities again.

“Now, we’re back in full force, and we’re fortunate to have five locations across the western Pennsylvania area,” Curd says. “We also have winter seasons and a summer season that can vary between as low as 400 kids to as high as 1,100 kids participating across each of the locations.”

According to Curd, what brings kids to the league in one way or another is a love of football. For some kids, flag football is a compromise for those who are eager to play the game but have parents concerned about the safety risks that come with tackling. For others, their love of the game is so intense they participate in the league in addition to playing tackle football.

“Even though they’re playing tackle football four to five days a week, what I call ‘diehards’ are the kids where anything that’s involved in football they want to be a part of,” Curd says.

The youth league includes kids between the ages of 5 and 15, with girls being able to choose between playing on a co-ed team or participating in the girls-only division.

“There are certain subset of girls that just kind of don’t care, you know, ‘I don’t care about playing with boys, not a big deal,’” Curd says. “But for the majority of young ladies that want to get involved in it, doing it all-girls is more of a, I don’t want to call it a safer environment, but it’s an environment that kind of speaks to all girls, not just a handful of girls.”

A recent development for the girls division is that, in Sept. 2024, Pennsylvania joined Georgia, Florida, and Texas in making flag football a sanctioned high school sport.

Previously, the Steelers and Philadelphia Eagles sponsored the teams in an effort to help girls flag football get established within the commonwealth. While Curd says the partnership between the NFL teams and the league will continue, now that the teams at the 60 participating high schools are sanctioned, they’re eligible for school funding, and teams will be able to participate in interscholastic competitions during the 2025-26 school year.

Looking to the future, Curd points out that in 2028, flag football will officially be an Olympic sport; therefore, in the time between now and then, the goal is to help the game continue its growth. When thinking of why so many young people are gravitating towards flag football, Curd says, the appeal is likely because there isn’t one sort of person who’d excel at the game. If you love the game and are good at thinking ahead, Curd says, you can go far on the field.

“There’s no sort of athlete profile that fits for flag football. Oftentimes, there’s a profile that’s needed, not only just for female athletes but also for male athletes, [but] flag football is very much what I would call a come-as-you-are sport,” Curd says. “It doesn’t matter your height, your overall athleticism. If you have height and athleticism, that’s great. It’ll do nothing but help you. But strategy is what really matters.”