PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — In celebration of the 36th annual National Girls and Women in Sports Day on Wednesday, the Philadelphia Eagles announced a pair of initiatives. They launched an inaugural high school girls’ flag football league, and they made what they say is an unprecedented equipment donation.
The Eagles Girls Flag Football League of Philadelphia will start on March 18. It will comprise 15 teams combined, from the Philadelphia Public and Catholic Leagues:
• Benjamin Franklin High School
• Hill-Freedman
• Frankford High School
• St. Hubert High School for Girls
• Arts Academy at Benjamin Rush
• Archbishop Ryan
• Archbishop Wood High School
• Science Leadership Academy @ Beeber
• Lansdale Catholic High School
• Academy at Palumbo
• South Philadelphia High School
• Swenson Arts & Technology
• Motivation High School
• West Catholic and Dobbins Tech
"This was a really important sort of day for us to showcase extended support to women and girls who have professional and personal pursuits and interests and in the category of sports,” Eagles Senior Vice President of Marketing and Media, Jen Kavanagh said on National Girls and Women in Sports Day.
“And what we learned leading up to today was that there was both a deficit and an opportunity when it came to girls having access to playing certain sports — in this case, of girls’ flag [football.] So we were very excited to dive into the issue and see ultimately how we could help support that access that we know is so critical."
According to Jimmy Lynch and Steven Haug, executive directors of athletics for the Philadelphia Public League and the Archdiocese of Philadelphia Schools, this is something they've been talking about with the Eagles since before the pandemic.
"We want females to be involved in sports," Lynch said, "and we're going to really launch this initiative to try and get more females involved in the game of football, which obviously will have a lifelong benefit -- connection to the game, the wellness benefits, the lifelong love of fitness and everything that comes involved."
The School District of Philadelphia Department of Athletics is handling the day-to-day operations of the league. Each team will play an eight-game season at sites chosen by the district.
There will also be a jamboree for the teams at the Linc, and the semi-finals and championship will be played at the NovaCare Complex.
"They'll get to play where the players play," Kavanagh said.
The Eagles say, in the Spring of 2021, they sent a survey to District 1 and 12 schools about whether they're interested, and the strongest response came from District 12 -- consisting of the Philadelphia Public and Catholic Leagues. Athena Girls Flag Football also helped recruit schools from the Catholic League. From there, more surveys were sent out. And those help narrow things down to 15 confirmed teams dedicated to growing girls’ flag football.
"I know the numbers when the schools had signups back as far as the fall were very, very high, which is a great problem to have," Haug said. "I think that it's gonna grow. I know we have other schools within the Archdiocese that are already looking at the opportunity of pursuing girls flag football in the future. I know the Eagles are looking to expand the number of teams with this opportunity next year already. So I think it's going to really blossom.”
Kavanagh said the Eagles have been working with the Pittsburgh Steelers to get more schools involved in the future because the PIAA says in order for it to be sanctioned as one of their sports, at least 100 schools in the state need to be involved.
The organization says that, as of Wednesday, 14 NFL teams have committed to a first year league, and seven states -- Alaska, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, New York and Nevada -- have officially sanctioned girls’ flag as a varsity sport.
For more teams to join the Eagles league in the future, they can let the organization know of their interest through the Philadelphia Public League and from there, the Eagles say they can go through the steps to get involved.
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Bringing awareness to a deficit in sports bras
In addition to announcing the creation of their high school girls flag football league, the organization -- along with the NFL Foundation -- also committed an "unprecedented" donation of sports bras, $100,000 in value, to female athletes in the School District of Philadelphia.
"We learned that girls were having difficulty getting access to essential equipment, in this case being sports bras, and that was really keeping them from playing a sport that they loved with confidence, and we wanted to take that barrier down," Kavanagh said.
That purchase accounts for nearly 6,000 sports bras that will be donated to the nonprofit "Leveling the Playing Field" for distribution. The mission of this nonprofit is to get children from mainly under-resourced communities involved in sports by collecting and redistributing gently used or extra sports gear. They have a warehouse based in Sharon Hill, but Director of Operations Kaitlin Brennan says they don't put any geographic limits on their work.
Brennan explained the Eagles provided them with the funding to bring their cause to the Delaware Valley, with their partnership beginning last fall.
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Brennan said LPF was aware of a sports bra deficiency from their constituents but weren't getting the necessary donations to make the proper impact. She says the Eagles listened to their community and came to them with this idea to donate nearly 6,000.
"It was kind of a melding of the minds," Brennan told KYW, "and we were really able to kind of not only get something of a project that brought awareness to this issue, but also offered a solution -- offered a direct solution so that girls and young women could get on the field this season."
Awareness is a critical part of this too.
"Girls, particularly girls of color, and in under-resourced communities are facing an additional equipment barrier, and that's a sports bra," Brennan said. "It's just another piece of equipment. But again, it's something that may not, you know, it's often an afterthought, people may not think about it, and it really is providing a stumbling block or a barrier to girls not only entering sports that they might be interested in, but staying in them."
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Brennan and Kavanagh, generally speaking, stressed gender equity and the importance of females getting the same opportunities. LPF is also involving themselves with the Eagles new flag football league for high school girls.
"So all of those teams, all of those schools will have access to all of LPF's equipment resources," Brennan said. "So obviously, this is one component of it, one big component of it, making sure that all their players have new quality sports for us to really kick off this season. But the great thing about LPF is we're not just a one-off kind of donation. We're a continual point of access for whether it be schools, sports leagues, really any other youth program, to be able to access free sports gear whenever they need it, and to be able to come back as often as they need it."
Brennan believes the league is an outstanding idea and hopes it's part of a larger trend nationwide, "to make sure that girls have just as many opportunities to play football as boys." And her lasting message to young female athletes is, "LPF, the Philadelphia Eagles, the broader Philadelphia community -- that we see girls and we want them to have every opportunity to play, to get active and to do something they love. And not only do we want them to have that opportunity, we're here to provide every resource that they might need to get on the field."