“Everybody was jumping up and down,” former Washington Husky All-American receiver Mario Bailey said after news broke that the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association voted to make girls flag football an officially sanctioned high school sport.
Bailey, now Seattle Seahawks vice president of community engagement & legends, has been working towards this goal for 4 years. He got Washington Husky’s first-year head coach to lend his support last year.
“He’s a girl dad himself and wants opportunities for his girls,” Bailey said. But it was a swing and a miss so they lined up ran the play again (please excuse the mixed metaphor), this time they found pay dirt.
Then the Husky legend got philosophical. “It’s never in your time,” he said. “It’s on somebody else’s time. I’m just happy that it happened. It was inevitable.”
But that time is now.
It’s been that time in 14 other states: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Mississippi, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.
With Bailey’s the Seahawks have been banking on that inevitably, building out a building a “The Future of Football is Female” wall at Lumen Field with flags from the state’s high schools with girls flag teams.
“It’s going to be an Olympic sport in 2028,” here informed. “A lot of states are starting to get on the process like last year.”
Girl’s Flag Football continued to expand as club sports despite last year’s snub. “We have over 100 girl’s programs in the state of Washington already competing in the sport,” he said. “Now they can compete for college scholarships as there are over 40 universities offering scholarships.”
Other former UW football players have expressed support for “All of the Huskies that I know are behind it. It’s another opportunity for the young ladies to have to play sports to actually get a scholarship,” he continued. “It’s another opportunity for them to be great. If you look at sports and women’s sports in particular right now and you look at college basketball in the WNBA and you look at Kaitlyn Clark and Angel, Reese and all of these athletes doing their thing that’s what’s about to happen and girl’s flag football”
Bailey said that all eyes fixed on the future.
“We’re just waiting for the 2028 Olympics to see young stars come out,” he said. And also fixed in Friday nights. “The Seahawks did something with the girls high school girl’s flag ‘take over’ last year,” he said. “It was Friday night lights like high school football for for guys on Friday night except his girls flag football so every Friday night when the girls would play flag football around the state of Washington. We would go and have our Seahawks dancers we have Blitz have a couple players come out and just making something special.”
And the entirety is the state’s football communities responded positively despite being unsanctioned by the state’s high school sports governing body.
“The parents and the communities came out and supported their schools,” Bailey said. “You just see the girls. They’re out there competing and everybody’s behind it.”
Still the Huskies’ single-season record holder for touchdown receptions, he had a promise: “You just watch: it will be the hottest thing out here in the next year,” he said. “Just because it’s 100-percent sanctioned now doesn’t mean the Seahawks are backing off supporting the girls. We’re 100-percent behind them and we’ll keep pushing the sport forward.”
