Under Armour and the Dick’s Sporting Goods Foundation have together donated $1 million to Click Clack: Next Era Grant, a grant for girls’ flag football to be delivered through a foundation called Beyond Sport.
The money will be “providing critical financial resources, top-tier equipment and apparel, and access to high-quality coach education through Positive Coaching Alliance,” also known as PCA.
PCA is a non-profit with roots in Stanford University’s Athletic Department. It was founded in 1998 by Jim Thompson, who – though formerly the director of the Public and Global Management Programs at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business – holds a degree in elementary education. Accordingly, PCA specializes in training the “Double-Goal Coach,” whose lessons for the young apply to both sport and life. The Double-Goal Coach is the title of one of Thompson’s books.
According to Rick Jordan, Vice President of the Dick’s Sporting Goods Foundation, the grant will help fund “out-of-school-time organizations” and persuade state associations and school districts to make girls flag football an “official high school sport.”
In addition, Under Armour and USA Football hosted a girls’ flag football clinic on Feb. 5 within the National Football League’s Super Bowl LX Fan Experience. This forms part of Under Armour’s Project Rampart, which seeks to “elevate the student-athlete experience and improve academic outcomes through the power of sport.”
In a deal that runs through the 2028 Summer Olympics, Under Armour is the Official and Exclusive Uniform, Apparel and Footwear Partner of USA Football and the US National Team, as we’ve reported.
The state of the sport
The National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) reported a year ago that most of the growth in girls’ flag football had occurred in the previous five to seven years. Nine US states have sanctioned the sport (Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Nevada, Alaska, New York, Arizona, Illinois and California), and 19 others are running pilot programs.
Canada and Mexico have strong national leagues – namely, Flag Football Canada and the Federación Mexicana de Fútbol Americano – and the NFL is involved abroad.
In 2011 the New York Jets became the first NFL team to help launch a varsity flag-football team for girls. This was in New York City’s Public School Athletic League, which now has more than 60 teams. The Jets also run a girls’ flag-football league in London. In 2025 the New England Patriots underwrote and opened the first dedicated flag-football field in Germany.
Women’s flag football now has 16 countries qualified for this year’s Flag Football World Championship, organized by the International Federation of American Football (IFAF) and scheduled for Düsseldorf, Germany, on August 13-16.
