One other Division I college is pursuing the addition of ladies’s flag soccer.
In a letter to the campus neighborhood revealed on Friday, Cal Poly athletic director Don Oberhelman mentioned the college might add girls’s flag soccer as a varsity sport as early as 2027.
Cal Poly is the sixth Division I college on the NCAA stage to announce its intentions of beginning a girls’s flag soccer group. The members of the Huge West comply with Alabama State, Lengthy Island, Mercyhurst, Mount St. Mary’s, and UT Arlington.
Again in February, flag soccer made a major stride in gaining floor within the faculty ranks when the NCAA really useful including it to its Rising Sports activities for Ladies program. Ought to flag soccer be granted standing in this system on the 2026 NCAA conference, there might be a methods to go earlier than followers see one thing like an NCAA Match for the game.
Nonetheless, as flag soccer barrels towards its debut on the Olympics in 2028 in Los Angeles, curiosity in it appears to be rising on the collegiate stage.
Nebraska AD Troy Dannen mentioned of us ought to preserve “a detailed eye” on girls’s flag soccer after internet hosting an exhibition contest on the Husker Video games in April. Final month, ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips informed SB Nation the convention is “watching” what’s taking place in flag soccer and the convention has had “a couple of preliminary conversations” concerning the sport.
On Could 9, 2024, in an electronic mail obtained by SB Nation by an open data request, NCAA Senior Vice President Felicia Martin wrote to Division I athletic administrators: “The mixture of flag soccer’s Olympic recognition and its increasing recognition amongst youth and highschool gamers has elevated its significance as one in every of NCAA President Charlie Baker’s prime priorities for the Affiliation.” The e-mail included stats concerning the sport’s development and hyperlinks to movies and a studying portal.
In saying the addition of flag soccer at Cal Poly, Oberhelman wrote that he hopes that being early on investing within the sport and constructing a program shortly will enable it to “embark on a legacy of success” equally to how the Mustangs have carried out in seashore volleyball “which continues to pay dividends.” Seashore volleyball is a sport that additionally grew from the NCAA’s Rising Sports activities for Ladies program and now has championship standing. The Mustangs have been to 5 NCAA Tournaments for seashore volleyball and have superior to the nationwide semifinals in every of the previous two years.
Cal Poly can be elevating its STUNT program from membership standing to a varsity sport.
“Each of those additions are a part of the college’s long-term planning to extend alternatives for feminine student-athletes,” Oberhelman wrote. “That is notably vital as Cal Poly’s feminine scholar inhabitants has elevated during the last 12 years from 42 p.c of enrollment to 51 p.c.”
Whereas only a handful of Division I faculties have added girls’s soccer, many extra have on the Division II and III ranges.
This previous season, the Division III America East held a full varsity season of ladies’s flag soccer capped off with a convention championship, turning into the primary NCAA league to take action. Jacqie McWilliams-Parker — commissioner of the CIAA, the Division II HBCU convention — informed SB Nation that she hopes to have flag soccer as a varsity sport within the league in the course of the 2026-27 tutorial yr.
