EVERETT — Football season is here, and if Snohomish County is any indication, more girls than ever will be playing flag football as summer sun fades into fall fields with players pitching the pigskin.
For 300 Snohomish County girls, their fall season will get in formation at the line of scrimmage in recreational leagues organized by the YMCA of Snohomish County as flag football continues to grow with support from the NFL and franchises like the Seahawks.
“Overall, through all the YMCAs, we have about 1200 kids signed up this fall season and about 300 of them are girls,” Chris Bellecourt, Association Director of Sports Advancement for YMCA of Snohomish County says about the booming demand for youth flag football.
Bellecourt tells the EverettPost.com the rec league schedule is designed to mimic the college football season, complete with an end of season bowl game.
The season starts tonight and ends on November 7.
The girls flag football season takes on added significance because more high schools are adding girls flag football as a varsity and junior varsity sport.
Glacier Peak High School and Snohomish High School are adding varsity and junior varsity teams for the 2026–27 season. Lake Stevens High School is introducing girls flag football along with Woodinville High School for their respective district’s winter sports season with school practices schedule to start in mid-November.
All three Everett Public School high schools–Everett, Jackson Park and Cascade–inaugurated girls flag football last season.
Flag football differs from conventional tackle football in a few specific ways. First, flag football is 7 players versus 7 players, instead of the usual 11 versus 11. The 7-players-a-side format is sometimes called “skeleton”, describing the use of only skill players offensively and defensively–no offensive or defensive line players to clutter the field.
Offense consists of a center to snap the ball, the quarter back to take the snap and then five receivers or running backs to be a target for the quarterback’s decision to pass or hand off for a run.
Defense consists of the correlating skill players like cornerbacks, safeties and line-backers to defend the offensive attack.
Instead of helmets and pads, flag football players wear a belt that snaps around their waist adorned with three long strips of fabric referred to as “flags” that will wave and flap when a player is sprinting or juking to avoid a tackle. The tackle occurs when a defender snatches the flag off the ball carrier’s belt. The ‘flag’ is built to detach when it’s gripped firmly enough. When the flag tears away from the belt, the tackle is made and the play ends.
“Flag didn’t exist for me when I was in high school,” Bailey Forsyth, the Everett Family YMCA Sports Coordinator, explains about this emerging opportunity for girls to explore the sport that is regularly associated with hulking men crashing head-long into each other at top speed.
Forsyth tells the EverettPost.com, “It’s a new sport and sometimes I’m jealous of these girls. I would have loved (to play)” when she was younger, but alas there was a lack of opportunity and organization.
Forsyth professes, “that would have been my thing if I was in high school and that was an option.” Now Forsyth is the young woman guiding the girls into this new flag football league. “It’s fun to learn along with them and grow with them. I think it’s so much fun, especially with it being a varsity sport now in Washington (high schools).”
Bellecourt builds on that flag football growth, saying, “Just as we get the word out about girls’ (teams), more and more are gonna start showing up and signing up. It’s just getting the word out there, getting them comfortable playing and realizing how fun it is to get out there.”
Forsyth adds, “Yeah, I think it’s just access points for girls. Making it accessible in the first place is huge. Just creating opportunities and spaces for them to come exist and that are kind of just for girls,” can be the incentive to try flag football for the first time.
There can be a reluctance for pre-teens and teens to start something drastically different or unfamiliar, Forsyth acknowledges. She helped coordinate the Y’s summer flag football camp at Fort Casey on Whidbey Island. “Walking into a camp that’s co-ed, but mostly I feel like the split is like 75 / 25 (percent) leaning toward boys and that can be intimidating. So, I think creating more intentional spaces for girls to come and try and be brave and fail and learn is important.”
That’s where the Y rises to meet the flag football road.
For the YMCA of Snohomish County league, players are signed up to play from Stanwood and Arlington in the north to the Duvall area and Monroe in the east. It also encompasses Lynnwood, Mill Creek, Mukilteo, Marysville and Everett.
Bellecourt says the growth in the rec league has been immense, “We have so many kids that are coming from those areas to the Y’s. So we said, ‘why not bring the practices out to you?’, so the families have a better experience not having to travel so far for practice.”
One explanation for the growth in flag football, especially for girls, is it’s a combination of the best of both worlds. Flag football is fast-paced. The teams are not too big with 7 players a side (soccer is 11, basketball is 5). There’s minimal contact and collisions usually result in fouls, thus encouraging body control during every play. Players are required to wear mouth guards for safety as is the norm in tackle football. Flag football doesn’t require the extensive and expensive equipment that tackle football does, making it much more affordable and accessible.
Bellecourt says, “It’s growing (in) popularity across the country with NFL Flag and the NFL putting a big investment into it, but in the girl’s side of it, with the expansion of the high school programs–how it’s kind of exploding across the country and becoming an Olympic event in 2028–it’s slowly kind of just gotten more and more popular every single year.”
USA Football cited long-term growth from 2015 to 2024, girls ages 6–12 playing flag football increased by 283%. “And it’s a sport where a lot of the times it’s the first sport the girls have ever played. They’re just out there pulling flags having fun with friends and realizing they’re having a passion for it.”
In Snohomish County there are five high school girls flag football teams that played last season and 10 more schools are starting a program this winter sports season in November, Bellecourt says. “So, we want to be that place where the girls can try it out if they want to before their school try-outs come up because it’s the winter sport in high school. We have a place for them to try it out. If they like it, great. If they find out it’s not for them, that helps them in the future, too, But we also know that once they get out there, they’re gonna love it and thrive.”
For those 300 girls this fall, Bellecourt says, “We have the playoff” for teams at the top of the standings but every team will have a final hurrah, “and then what we do with our last weekend, we have our championship game but all the teams end up with one last game. We call it a bowl game. Kind of like what the colleges do. They have one last game. So we have them named with different fun bowls so the kids can play in it and accessorize their uniforms to kind of kind of match the vibe of the bowl.”
Forsyth says, “We’re committed to keep growing it and get those girls involved. And I had so many girls this summer that (it was) their first time playing, they just wanted to try it out and they just had a blast which was super-fun.”