03-03-2025
Women Can Ball Too: Hendrix College Hosts Arkansas's first women's intercollegiate flag football tryout
Hendrix College will be the first in the state of Arkansas to offer flag football as a varsity sport. The college held its first tryout for current and prospective students on Thursday afternoon.
The women's flag football program will compete at the club level in Spring 2026 before transitioning to varsity status in Spring 2027.
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Women's flag football is expected to be considered as an Emerging Sport for Women by the National College Athletic Association (NCAA) in the coming year. Emerging Sports for Women are recognized by the NCAA but do not have sanctioned NCAA Championships.
Hendrix is the third NCAA Division III institution in the southeast and southwestern United States to announce the addition of the sport after Huntingdon College (Ala.) and Concordia University Texas did so earlier this year.
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Currently, 24 institutions in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) and seven schools in the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) feature women's flag football. This year, the Atlantic East Conference became the first conference across all three divisions of the NCAA to sanction women's flag football.
FOX 16 Sports was in Conway to cover the program's first tryout. We caught up with Hendrix President Karen Petersen, the new flag football coach Douglas Petersen, and several of the girls that participated.
The group spoke about what it's like to make history starting a new sport in Arkansas, what the sport does for women's inclusion in sports and how the first day on the field went for the student athletes.
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