U Sports to introduce women’s flag football as a pilot sport

Flag football makes its Olympic debut in 2028 and Canadian university sport has stepped up its role in producing players for the national women’s team.

U Sports and Football Canada will collaborate on the introduction of women’s flag football as a pilot sport for the 2027-28 season.

The governing body for Canadian university sport made the announcement Wednesday at its annual general meeting in St. John’s.

A pilot sport has a lower standard for participation levels and a five-year window to prove it deserves full-sport status.

“We certainly are paying regular attention to gender opportunities, and in this, it did represent an opportunity to provide a football offering on the women’s side,” said U Sports chief executive officer Pierre Arsenault.

Football Canada has held a Canadian Collegiate Flag Football Championship for the last five years.

Women’s flag football has been a varsity sport in Quebec’s RSEQ conference since 2021, with eight teams participating. The University of Montreal defended its title in Regina in May.

But second-year quarterback Elisabeth Ashkar of Blainville, Que., said this was the first year the team was allowed to call itself the Carabins.

“We’re going to get more resources, more funding with this incoming news,” Ashkar said.

“Young girls right now are going to have a clearer path to playing flag football at the university level. It’s just more opportunities for girls all around the country to play a sport and continue practising it throughout their school years.”

Canada’s roster for the world championship Aug. 13-16 in Duesseldorf, Germany, is dominated by players from Quebec.

But about 500 women also play at a club level at 14 Ontario universities in the Ontario Women’s Intercollegiate Football Association.

‘We’ve been fighting for so long’

Calgary’s Samantha Hopkins, a defensive back on the national team, has played football at Western for five years.

She hopes the sport’s elevated status yields better practice times than 6 a.m. slots, more access to medical support and more flexibility from professors when it comes to being a student-athlete.

“We’ve been fighting for so long to get recognized as a sport at Western and get assistance, have support from the university, because we knew that flag football was going to take off,” Hopkins said Wednesday from a national team training camp in Montreal.

“It’s so important to finally have this pathway. Now you have high school programs and then these high school athletes can get recruited into Canadian collegiate programs.

“We have a lot of flag talent, but it’s all going to the States because they’re the ones that have the programs, they have the funds, and they have this support. Now that we have this pathway, it’s a really great way to keep talent in Canada.”

This year’s world championship is the first opportunity for countries to secure men’s and women’s qualification for the 2028 Summer Olympics in 2028.

Over half of the Canadian women’s roster bound for Duesseldorf is comprised of active university players, and there will be university players on the Olympic team should Canada qualify, says head coach Rachel Lessard.

“If we establish this in all the provinces, then they’ll get the same competition, they’ll play more five-on-five, well-organized, and also universities that are now starting up, there will be more services given to the athletes,” Lessard said.

“It’s a big deal for us for the quality of our sport, the credibility of our sport. We’re going to the Olympics, so I feel we need something under the Olympics to bring those athletes up.”

Women’s flag football will increase the number of U Sports championships to 24, including 13 women’s sports.

Flag football is the second pilot sport after men’s and women’s tennis in 2023-24.

“When we evaluate a new sport, we certainly look at the footprint that already exists within our university system and where it may have some presence on different campuses,” Arsenault said.

“There were a number of schools that were interested in pursuing this as a U Sports sport, and then ultimately just the growth of women’s flag football really across North America right now, to see the attention that it’s grabbing, the fact that it will be in the Olympics for the first time in 2028, we saw the ability for some real momentum around adding this as a U Sports sport.”

U Sports is one of the largest sport bodies in Canada with nearly 15,000 student-athletes playing varsity sports in 58 universities from Victoria to St. John’s.