NORTH NEWTON, Kan. - The Bethel College athletic department announced today the addition of women's flag football as a varsity sport at Bethel College, with an official launch coming for the 2022-23 academic year.
"Women's flag football is a unique and very fast-growing sport, particularly within the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics," explained Bethel College director of athletics Tony Hoops.
"With the support of the National Football League backing this collegiate sport, we are excited to enhance the overall student experience at Bethel College by adding flag football."
Women's flag football will become the department's 19th varsity program. Prior to this announcement, the addition of competitive dance in the 2019-2020 academic year had been the newest varsity program at Bethel College.
Bethel College will become the fourth full-time member institution of the Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference (KCAC) to field a varsity women's flag football team. Bethel joins Kansas Wesleyan University, Ottawa University, and the University of Saint Mary, whose teams competed during the 2020-2021 school year.
The KCAC also had associate members Midland University and Cottey College join in the inaugural conference season, making up six of the total 14 varsity programs currently in the NAIA.
Hoops shared that "Bethel is excited to be at the forefront" for the growth surrounding the sport.
"This will not only increase female athletic numbers of student-athletes on our campus but also allow for a more diverse population on campus comprised of athletes from the southwest and southeast parts of the country where women's flag football is very popular already in high schools."
Women's flag football features a schedule primarily in the spring season. Each team plays with seven players at a time, on a football field 80 yards in length and 40 yards in width. Teams may move offensively by either passing or running the football, while the act of "tackling" is performed by pulling the flag of the ball carrier.
"Women's flag football is a strategic addition to our varsity sports offerings at Bethel College," stated President Jon Gering. "It emerged as the strongest candidate after a deliberate cost/benefit analysis of a suite of athletic programs."
Gering went on to note Bethel's roots of being a school that focuses on women's athletics.
"Bethel has a long and distinguished history of success in women's athletics. This program builds on that history. It has high growth capacity and will open up new geographic areas for recruiting."
The search for the program's first head coach will begin in July 2021. Bethel will take the 2021-2022 school year as an opportunity to build the program before declaring as a full-fledged member of the NAIA with competition beginning in the 2022-2023 school year.
