Dallas Cowboys Girls Flag Football Explodes to Nearly 100 DFW Schools

From a modest start with a handful of Fort Worth ISD teams in 2022, girls flag football in the Dallas-Fort Worth area has become one of the fastest-growing sports in Texas high school athletics. By the 2025 season, nearly 100 high schools were participating — a trajectory that coaches and players say shows no signs of slowing.

In mid-May, The Star in Frisco hosted the North Texas Flag Football Championships, with two teams earning berths in the first-ever state tournament scheduled for DACTU Stadium on June 13th and 14th. The rapid expansion has brought serious competition with it, and programs like Arlington Martin are setting the standard for what the sport can look like at the high school level.

The Lady Warriors won the regional championship last year with a team that had only come together a few weeks before the season started — 73 girls showed up to tryouts. This year, the program has built on that foundation with a film-study culture and a coaching staff that treats the game with the same rigor as any varsity program. Six Martin seniors have earned college scholarships to play flag football, and the team received an invitation to a national tournament in Canton, Ohio, where they'll compete against programs from Florida, Georgia, and California — states with over a decade of experience in the sport.

"We're one of 16 teams around the country," one Martin coach noted. "Just us being in our second year and people thinking we're at that level — it's been an honor."

At schools like Heath, tryout numbers are climbing year over year, and players who came in unsure of themselves have found both the sport and a team culture that pushes them to grow. The growth isn't just about numbers — it's about the level of play rising alongside them.