ARLINGTON, Texas – UT Arlington President Dr. Jennifer Cowley officially announced the addition of women's flag football as a varsity sport to UTA Athletics today. The program will begin competition in Spring 2027.
 
"We are so thrilled to be able to announce that we are Texas' first NCAA Division I school to offer varsity flag football for women," UT Arlington President Dr. Jennifer Cowley said. "We are thrilled to be able to launch this sport, it's growing, our ISD partners have been growing their teams and with Olympics coming in 2028 and the launch of women's flag football, we felt it was just the right time to be able to start and create a pathway for those future Olympic athletes."
 
UTA becomes just the fifth NCAA Division I university to add the sport (Alabama State, Long Island, Mercyhurst and Mount St. Mary's), and the third program in the state of Texas across all levels to do so (Concordia, Texas Wesleyan). There are currently over 50 colleges and universities nation-wide offering women's flag football as a varsity sport (NAIA, NCAA Divisions I, II, and III), while 65 NCAA schools across all three divisions sponsor women's flag football either at the varsity or club level. Women's flag football is set to debut at the Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028.
 
"Women's flag football is growing exponentially across the country," Director of Intercollegiate Athletics Jon Fagg said. "It's set to become an NCAA emerging sport here in the near future, which will open up opportunities to encourage growth in the sport and ideally we'll be the first to start major schools, Division I institutions to begin adding the program and we'll have a conference hopefully in a few years."
 
UT Arlington's flag football program will play its games at Maverick Stadium, and will hire a coaching staff and begin signing players later this year. 
 
There are currently 14 states that have sanctioned flag football as a high school varsity sport and there are over 500,000 female participants playing the sport in the United States (ages 6-17) with NFL team and partner-backing.
 
This marks the first sport addition for UTA since women's golf was added for the 2017-18 season, and this brings the total number of sport offerings for UTA's division of intercollegiate athletics to 16.


   
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