In its second fully-fledged season, the Minnesota Vikings-sponsored girls flag football league will more than double in size, with 104 high schools participating in the fast-growing sport.

Though flag football is not yet sanctioned as a Minnesota State High School League sport, the expanding local league is part of a nationwide surge in girls high school and college flag football opportunities ahead of the sports’ inclusion in the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

After debuting a four-team pilot league in spring 2024, the Vikings put $600,000 behind a 51-team league last spring, which ran from late April until a one-day state tournament in June.

This season will span a similar time frame through late spring, with a series of Sunday doubleheaders from April 26 through June 8 — only with double the participants vying for the state trophy that Mahtomedi claimed last season.

“I think our recruitment [of teams] this year was a little bit more hands off, just because there was so much success with the first real year,” said Emily Weinberg, the Vikings youth and high school football coordinator. “It was schools recruiting other schools in their area saying, ‘Hey, this was a really great opportunity for our students. We think you should join as well.’ ”

All 51 teams that participated in last year’s league will return for another season, said Joe Rush, the Vikings director of youth and high school football.

“That, to me, tells a tremendously powerful story about the value this has added to schools and communities and student-athletes,” Rush said.

Last season, eight of the league’s 51 teams were located beyond the nine-county Twin Cities metro. Proctor was the lone team in the Duluth area, while league runner-up LaCrescent-Hokah anchored a cluster of programs in the southeast corner of the state. Fairmont and Melrose made up the southwest and northwest corners of the league’s reach, respectively.

This year, 20 of the participating schools are located outside the metro, with the northernmost participant being Mountain-Iron Buhl and Grand Rapids joining nearby. The St. Cloud area and southeast Minnesota each saw a jump in participants.

“We knew that we wanted to target certain areas of the state to create more geographic accessibility, or, frankly, cutting down on the travel and logistics for some of those rural teams,” Rush said.

With the addition of Wayzata, Prior Lake, White Bear Lake, Stillwater, Edina, Maple Grove, Shakopee and Centennial, 19 of the state’s largest 20 high schools will have flag football teams.

The league also saw an influx of charter and private schools, such as charters Hmong College Prep Academy and Sejong Academy and private schools Minnehaha Academy and Breck, among others.

Notably, all seven high schools in the Minneapolis Public Schools system fielded teams last year. This year, seven St. Paul public schools will join the league.

View the full list of participating schools here.

Flag football’s MSHSL future

The doubling of participants in the Vikings’ program is another step toward garnering enough member interest for the MSHSL to designate flag football with “emerging sport” status.

At its Feb. 5 board meeting, the MSHSL continued discussing the progress of girls flag football, which is seeking approval to begin competing under MSHSL bylaws for either the 2026-27 or 2027-28 school year.

The plan is for more discussion at the April 7 MSHSL board meeting, and if it stays on course, it could gain approval at the June 2 meeting for emerging status, which starts a 2-5-year implementation process.

MSHSL executive director Erich Martens noted that girls flag football games are currently played on Sundays, which goes against MSHSL rules.

“They can do that because they’re their own activity, not part of the high school league,” Martens said. “That’s not something to easily change in a space where a number of students participating play football and might have another spring sport, but also it would be a violation of our bylaw. So at some point, we’ve got to be able to make that transition, to have it fall under all the same rules that apply to all of our activities.”

Rush said the Vikings are regularly in “close communication” with the MSHSL, which is a member of the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS).

This offseason, the Vikings gathered a 10-member advisory committee of coaches and administrations to reflect on the prior season. They discussed how to balance maintaining momentum between seasons with an eventual transition to the NFHS’ 7-on-7 flag football rulebook. Currently, the Vikings’ league plays 5-on-5.

“But really, from year one to year two, we wanted to prioritize consistency,” Rush said.

Teams will be grouped into 26 four-team districts and will compete in an eight-team pod for one of 13 spots at the state tournament on June 8 at TCO Stadium in Eagan.

Strib Varsity reporter Joe Christensen contributed to this report.