Grand Crossing resident Fallan White, 15, is doing what she can now to make a name for herself.
Not even old enough to drive, the wide receiver for Butler College Prep’s flag football team will graduate in 2028 — the same year flag football will make its Olympic debut at the Summer Games in Los Angeles — and she’s making sure she’s ready.
“It’s better to start off early than wait,” she said.
White was one of more than a dozen players from Butler in Lake Forest on Aug. 14 to partake in the festivities that surround Chicago Bears training camp. The event was among a handful this summer that brought five high schools with girls flag football teams to camp, including Simeon, Harvard, Homewood-Flossmoor and Carver Military Academy. The athletes met players, coaches and Bears President/CEO Kevin Warren, who donated cleats to each team.
The visits occurred right before the flag football season started, reflecting the Bears’ continued commitment to creating pathways for girls in football. Gustavo Silva, Bears manager of youth football and community programs, said roughly 200 schools will have girls flag football this year.He said Illinois is in the top five or six states for girls flag football participation. And to think the sport started with just 22 teams in Chicago Public Schools in 2021.
“Whether it’s playing for their rec league, park district, a Boys and Girls Club, a youth organization, for them to have a pathway … the goal is to make the game as inclusive and accessible as possible, to create different entry points so that anyone interested in playing the game, boy, girl, different abilities, can all have access to the game,” Silva said.
Angel Brooks, head coach of Butler’s flag team, has been involved with the sport for years, playing on Sundays for the Absolute Athletics league. Now the physical education teacher at Catherine Cook School is building out the high school team, many of whom are underclassmen playing varsity. In their second season, Brooks hopes to get enough athletes on the Lynx team to generate a JV team. She said the team’s 2024 win in one of the CPS Bowl championship games (the CPS Hardwork Bowl) is helping with recruitment.
“It’s (flag football) always been intriguing to me,” she said. “Being able to coach, it’s even more fun because it’s pleasing to see when the girls learn and start to understand the sport. It’s a sport that gives them their own lane and their own opportunities, and they enjoy it.”
The Lynx’s season starts Tuesday, and quarterback Nevaeh Beasley, 17, a senior, already has her sights on garnering flag football scholarships to pursue a degree in sports medicine.
“I’ve loved sports ever since I was little, so it has to be something with sports,” she said. Her advice for those curious about flag football: “Work hard and be dedicated, because this game could take you a long way, since it’s just starting out.”
Silva said Illinois was the ninth state in the nation to sanction flag football for girls in 2024; Ohio just got sanctioned, making the total 17. Now that Illinois colleges are building programs for girls flag (the Bears will host a college tournament for Illinois schools in March), Silva is looking forward to making more milestones in the field — from growing girls flag football to 300 high schools to strengthening the flag football pipeline, and getting girls flag sanctioned for the middle school population.
“With the Olympics in 2028, we’d love to see girls from Illinois and Chicago participate,” Silva said. “We have international leagues that we started — three in the UK and two in Spain that are going to start this fall. We want to see representation from our Chicago market.”
“We are working with middle schools starting a pilot league in Rockford this fall. … We want to use the same model that we did with the high school programs. The middle school level will feed the high school programs, which will feed the collegiate programs, and those collegiate and high school programs will feed the international programming. We’re trying to create a pathway from youth all the way through adulthood.”