With assistance from the Seahawks, female flag football may become a recognized sport in..

In Washington and around the country, flag football is getting its chance to shine on the big stage.

Last week, the Emerald Ridge High School girls flag football team traveled to Detroit for the 2024 NFL draft and appeared on stage alongside Seahawks wide receiver Tyler Lockett when he announced their third-round pick.

In front of thousands of fans with millions more watching on TV, Lockett used his platform to advocate making girls flag football a sanctioned sport in Washington, which could become reality next week when the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association’s Representative Assembly votes on the matter from Wednesday though May 10.

“Everybody that’s watching in Washington, let’s vote and make this happen,” Lockett said.

WIAA Executive Director Mick Hoffman says the state of the sport is “phenomenal.” 11 states have sanctioned girls flag football, with Colorado doing so just last week. Flag football is also scheduled to be a part of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games.

“We got the schools that are doing it as a trial,” Hoffman said. “I think there’s 83 schools last count, and they’re reporting phenomenal results. We’re getting as many as 60 to 65 girls out at some schools.

At Emerald Ridge in Puyallup, coach Ayanna Arceneaux said that the program started out with 62 players this year. The Jaguars won the Western Washington Championship in their first season, which led to them getting chosen by the Seahawks to accompany Lockett onstage and serve as faces of the effort to get the sport sanctioned in Washington.

“The whole experience was very surreal,” Arceneaux said. “It was an opportunity and experience to just showcase these girls and just be like, grateful for the experience that we have and also just to encourage other girls to come out and play flag football.”

In order to pass and become a sanctioned sport, the measure needs 60% of the vote to pass. With 53 voters weighing in, that means 32 need to be in favor of the new sport becoming official, according to Hoffman.

The Seahawks are one of the biggest supporters of the sport’s explosive growth and the sanctioning effort, with Managing Director of Community Engagement Becca Stout and former Huskies star Mario Bailey leading the charge.

The Seahawks announced last week that the team is donating $24,000 to help launch new girls flag football teams in Issaquah, Bellingham, Cedarcrest, Wenatchee, Othello, and Kingston. Since 2021, the team has given out $324,900 in grants to launch different programs around Washington.

Between that money and a $100,000 grant from Nike that schools can use for uniforms, Hoffman says that the state has been given nearly half a million dollars to help schools get their programs off the ground.