CHICAGO – Roosevelt University announced Wednesday the addition of women's flag football as a varsity sport beginning in the 2027-28 academic year.
This is the first time the school has added sports since Roosevelt merged with Robert Morris University Illinois and added bowling, football, men's hockey and men's volleyball.
The Lakers will compete in the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, which will sponsor the sport for the first time this spring. The 2027 GLIAC flag football season will feature five schools, four full members of the conference – Davenport University, Purdue University Northwest, Saginaw Valley State University and University of Wisconsin-Parkside – as well as Lewis University as an affiliate member. The University of Illinois Springfield and Quincy University will join the league as affiliate members in 2027-28.
"Women's flag football is one of the fastest growing sports at the high school level, and an emerging sport at the NCAA level," said Mike Cassidy, Vice President of Athletics and Student-Athlete Success. "The addition of women's flag football at Roosevelt provides a transformational next step for those participants to live, learn and compete at Chicago's only NCAA Division II institution.
"I cannot wait to aid in the program's development, creating another pathway for students to be a part of the Lakers student-athlete experience."
A flag football game will consist of four 12-minute quarters on a field measuring 80x40 yards. The two teams will play 7-on-7 with each offense having four downs to cross the opposing 20-yard line for a first down. A touchdown will be worth six points, though the kicked extra point is replaced by a play from the five-yard line for one point or 10-yard line for two. The flags will be affixed to belts with sockets with two flags on either side of the hips.
Women's flag football was approved in January as the fourth sport in the current iteration of the Emerging Sports for Women program from the NCAA. Since the program was created in 1994, eight sports have successfully become NCAA championship sports: rowing (1996), ice hockey (2000), water polo (2000), bowling (2003), beach volleyball (2015), women's wrestling (2025), acrobatics and tumbling (2027) and stunt (2027). In January 2027, the NCAA membership will vote on potentially holding the first NCAA championship in the spring of 2028.
Roosevelt has begun a nationwide search for the program's inaugural head coach.
