The Edina Girls Athletic Association flag football team spent Friday morning running routes on the same field as the Vikings.
At the TCO Performance Center training facility in Eagan, the team of eight girls received a send-off — which included a facilities tour and a quick chat with Vikings first-round draft pick J.J. McCarthy — before they head to the NFL Flag Championships at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, from July 18-21.
The U18 Edina team competes within a community athletic association, not a school system. The team will face opponents representing the 31 other NFL teams. There will be teams from the 11 states where girls flag football is sanctioned at the high school level. Minnesota is not one of them.
“It’ll be fun to be playing because it’s going to be really competitive,” Edina rising senior Lyric Busby said. “It’s more girls who are really committed to the sport and they literally have like varsity and JV teams for this even, for some states.”
In order for flag football to be deemed an emerging sport by MSHSL, 20 schools need to compete interscholastically for two years, Vikings youth and high school football coordinator Emily Weinberg said. The Vikings partner with eight school districts to support middle school girls flag football and spearhead the Minnesota Girls Flag Initiative Committee.
“I’m really hopeful that showcasing their journey to NFL Flag Championships will help inspire other programs around the state to want to kickstart girls flag,” Weinberg said.
On Sunday, the Vikings will also host four of the current high school programs that compete — Pine Island, Rosemount, La Crescent-Hokah and Houston — as they vie for the first state flag football high school title. The championship game kicks off at 11 a.m. at TCO Stadium.
A lack of widespread school-sanctioned flag football does not mean the Edina girls haven’t found a way to play. The EGAA, incorporated in 1975, offers 7-on-7 fall flag football for girls from fourth to 12th grade. Coach Trevor Busby, Lyric’s father, has been officiating games for 15 years and estimated 80 teams play each fall, with eight high-school-aged teams that compete against one another.
Many of the girls headed to Canton with Busby and coach Deitan Dubuc began playing flag football in late elementary school and balance it with other sports. Lyric will play lacrosse at the University of Cincinnati. Rising senior Kaylee Idrogo-Lam juggles flag football with soccer, hockey and lacrosse.
“A big reason I was able to start flag football was because of how tight-knit the girls community of sports is in Edina,” said Idrogo-Lam, who was recently elected to be an EGAA student board member. “Everyone wants to work together and provide these opportunities for us.”
The NFL Flag Championships used to be incorporated into Pro Bowl festivities in February but will stand as its own event for the first time this year, with over 280 teams of girls and boys competing. St. Paul-based U15 boys team JSizzles will also represent the Vikings. Most teams qualified through regional tournaments, but with the tournament’s shift from February to July, timing required the Vikings to select the Edina girls as their representative.
“It came together pretty quickly” around a month ago, said Trevor Busby, bringing together girls who had played together and against one another through EGAA.
“With their long history of girls flag,” Weinberg said, “we figured this would be a great opportunity for them to showcase all the work that they’ve put in over the years.”