Nevada’s Flag Football Boom: From Local Fields to Olympic Dreams

Nevada State University is making history on the gridiron, becoming the first college in the state to field a women's flag football team, and early results suggest a bright future for the program and the sport.

The Henderson-based university launched the team in the fall of 2025. By February, the Scorpions defeated NAIA school La Sierra 51-20 at the Intermountain Health Performance Center, winning the state's first college flag football game. The 25-player roster is drawn largely from local athletes, and the university has applied for NAIA membership.

"Flag football is such an emerging sport," said Yvonne Wade, Nevada State's first athletic director. "It's so much excitement behind it right now with NFL teams, the youth programs that are backing the sport."

"There's so much athletic talent here, you know, and the girls can play just as hard as the boys here," she said.

The program arrives as Nevada girls' flag football participation at the high school level has tripled since the 2013-14 school year, with more than 1,800 players competing statewide. Nevada was among the earliest adopters of the sport, launching a pilot program in Clark County in 2012 before sanctioning it as a varsity sport in 2016. The sport was approved for the NCAA Emerging Sports for Women program in January 2026 and is set to debut at the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.

For players like seventh-grader Avery Fuimaono, the growth represents more than just numbers.

"I really like the sport because I can really like, I like catching the ball and getting touchdowns, and it makes me feel good every time," Fuimaono said. "When I was little, I thought that only men would get scholarships. When I was saying women get scholarships today, it encourages me to get one too."

Wade says the message to young players is clear. "Dream big. Anything is possible. Play hard. Don't let them tell you can't do it, because you can," Wade said. "And you can go to college doing it, too."