The Utah Girls Tackle Football League (GFL) is the first all-girls youth

American football American football, referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada and also known as gridiron football, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular American football field, field with goalposts at e ...

league in the world, founded as a

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in March 2015. The league is currently in its season. The GFL consists of three age divisions: elementary (grades three–six),

junior high Middle school, also known as intermediate school, junior high school, junior secondary school, or lower secondary school, is an educational stage between primary school and secondary school. Afghanistan In Afghanistan, middle school includes g ...

(grades seven–nine), and a

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division (grades ten–twelve). There are over 600 players spread across 32 teams; 35% of them are

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. Everyone in the league apart from the match officials is a

volunteer Volunteering is an elective and freely chosen act of an individual or group giving their time and labor, often for community service. Many volunteers are specifically trained in the areas they work, such as medicine, education, or emergency ...

History

Creation as a nonprofit

In 2014, two years after Sam Gordon's football highlight video went viral, she posed a question at a school assembly she attended, asking which girls would be interested in playing tackle football and reportedly "dozens of hands went up." This interest caused Gordon and her father, an attorney, to look into starting a league of their own. They contacted a former offensive lineman for the Utah Jynx Women's Football team, Crystal Sacco, who was already making steps to start an all-girls youth league in the area. They also called

USA Football USA Football is the National Governing Body (NGB) of American football in the United States, having received formal certification from the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee on April 17, 2025, becoming the 38th Summer Olympics National Govern ...

Director of Football Development Samantha Rapoport for help. Sacco would go on to become the

commissioner A commissioner (commonly abbreviated as Comm'r) is, in principle, a member of a commission or an individual who has been given a commission (official charge or authority to do something). In practice, the title of commissioner has evolved to incl ...

of the league and Rapoport would become a member of the board of directors. In early 2015, with the assistance of a few local professional women's football players, Gordon and her father founded the GFL as a non-profit. It is the first known full-contact all-girls youth tackle football league ever. According to the organizers, the league filled up completely just three days after sign-ups began. Around 50 fifth and sixth-graders took part in the inaugural season, which was just four-weeks, compared to the current nine-week season.

Media coverage

The GFL gained national acclaim when it started in 2015, and has seen nationwide news coverage. The league has received both praise and criticism. While most news organizations initially simply reported on it being the first of its kind, some

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have taken a specific stance on the league.

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, for example, aired a segment in which the safety of the league was called into question. In the segment, they brought on a medical doctor who said that there is heightened risk of concussions for children and perhaps even further risk for girls. Others, however, have pushed praise onto the league, encouraging their audience to sign up. In 2020, two teams from the GFL played an exhibition match as the

NFL Pro Bowl The National Football League All-Star Game (1939–1942), Pro Bowl (1951–2022), or Pro Bowl Games (since 2023) is an annual event held by the National Football League (NFL) featuring the league's star players. The format has changed throughou ...

half time show. The teams had players representing seventeen different Utah high schools. A documentary short about the league titled ''First Down'' was released in 2022 at multiple film festivals across the U.S and received a favorable review in the ''Washington Post''.

Lawsuit to create public school-affiliated all-girls tackle football teams

In June 2017, Sam Gordon and her father, alongside five other GFL players (and their parents), filed a class action lawsuit against three local school districts to force

public high schools A state school, public school, or government school is a primary or secondary school that educates all students without charge. They are funded in whole or in part by taxation and operated by the government of the state. State-funded schools ar ...

to offer girls’ football in the Salt Lake Valley. Gordon spoke about the difficulties that girls who want to play tackle football face, saying that when she played with boys "I had a target on my back, and it was in the shape of a ponytail." As the only girl in the Ute conference youth tackle football league, she heard parents from opposing teams urge their kids to “beat the girl.” The lawsuit used

Title IX Title IX is a landmark federal civil rights law in the United States that was enacted as part (Title IX) of the Education Amendments of 1972. It prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school or any other education program that receiv ...

as justification and received national coverage. The two-week trial featured

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from girls who played and suffered a range of experiences, including

assault In the terminology of law, an assault is the act of causing physical harm or consent, unwanted physical contact to another person, or, in some legal definitions, the threat or attempt to do so. It is both a crime and a tort and, therefore, may ...

and

exclusion Exclusion may refer to: Legal or regulatory * Exclusion zone, a geographic area in which some sanctioning authority prohibits specific activities * Exclusion Crisis and Exclusion Bill, a 17th-century attempt to ensure a Protestant succession in En ...

. Gordon and the

plaintiff A plaintiff ( Π in legal shorthand) is the party who initiates a lawsuit (also known as an ''action'') before a court. By doing so, the plaintiff seeks a legal remedy. If this search is successful, the court will issue judgment in favor of the ...

s claimed girls were not offered equal opportunities in the districts’ football teams, and should be offered separate football teams. As the girls were from the

Granite Granite ( ) is a coarse-grained (phanerite, phaneritic) intrusive rock, intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly coo ...

Jordan Jordan, officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is a country in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. Jordan is bordered by Syria to the north, Iraq to the east, Saudi Arabia to the south, and Israel and the occupied Palestinian ter ...

and Canyons school district, those were the districts that were named as the defendants (in addition to the Utah Attorney General's Office). In 2021, U.S. District Court Judge Howard Nielson ruled in favor of the defendants. The judge stated that Utah school districts are not required to create a separate sport for girls interested in playing football, as girls who want to play can play on the existing boys teams. Nielson went on to say that “The mere fact that Defendants do not provide separate football teams for boys and girls is not discrimination on the basis of sex. To the contrary, it is undisputed that girls are permitted to play football and do in fact play, albeit in extremely limited numbers." The Federal ruling judged that constitutional and Title IX rights were not violated by the defendants. The lawsuit was appealed in 2022 to the

Tenth Circuit The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit (in case citations, 10th Cir.) is a federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following districts: * District of Colorado * District of Kansas * Distr ...

. The appeals court stated that the original decision by the lower courts was an error and the case should be reclassified. Additionally, the appeals court said that the lower courts should have allowed the lawsuit to be a

class action lawsuit A class action A class action is a form of lawsuit. Class Action may also refer to: * ''Class Action'' (film), 1991, starring Gene Hackman and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio * Class Action (band), a garage house band * "Class Action" (''Teenage R ...

. The appeals court sent the case back to the district court for further review. In 2023, the appeal was settled. A joint statement by the plaintiffs said that "the settlement agreement represents the parties’ efforts to advance the goals of Title IX by increasing opportunities for girls to participate in sports and by increasing participation by girls in sports." The settlement required several policy changes and actions for the school districts, including the creation of a Title IX athletic coordinator, requiring every

and

in Canyons, Jordan, and Granite districts to have a liaison that handles emerging sports, as well as a recurring survey by the districts asking students about their level of interest in sports. The districts must aim to boost the presence of girls' sports across elementary, middle, junior, and high school tiers. Such initiatives involve organizing registration gatherings, featuring sports details in various communication channels, showcasing girls' club sports and emerging sports on school websites, and allowing students who are interested in girls’ sports to apply to become a student-led club sport and be able to request the use of school facilities.

Districts

GFL is split into six districts, Herriman, Bingham, Riverton/

Utah County Utah County is the second-most populous county in the U.S. state of Utah. The county seat and largest city is Provo, which is the state's fourth-largest city, and the largest outside of Salt Lake County. As of the 2020 United States census ...

, West Jordan/ Copper Hills, West Granite/ Davis County, and

Canyons A canyon (; archaic British English spelling: ''cañon''), gorge or chasm, is a deep cleft between escarpments or cliffs resulting from weathering and the erosive activity of a river over geologic time scales. Rivers have a natural tendency t ...

/ East Granite/ Murray. Each division consists of three teams which are further divided by age: elementary (grades 3–6), junior high (grades 7–9), and High School (grades 10–12). These districts compete against one another at their corresponding age level.

Corporate structure

The GFL is a

501(c)(3) nonprofit organization A 501(c)(3) organization is a United States corporation, trust, unincorporated association or other type of organization exempt from federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of Title 26 of the United States Code. It is one of the 29 types of 5 ...

and is run by a

board of directors A board of directors is a governing body that supervises the activities of a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government agency. The powers, duties, and responsibilities of a board of directors are determined by government regulatio ...

. The league's board of directors is responsible for electing a Commissioner. The current president of the league is Crystal Sacco. According to the rules of the GFL, the president is "responsible for coordinating and running meetings, maintaining league records, initiating the scheduling process, revising and distributing league rules, monitoring the registration process, and acting as the final arbiter of any disputes that might arise." Any formal propositions to change any league methods, procedures, systems or other major decisions are affirmed by a greater part vote of the Board of Directors present at the meeting at which the vote is taken. If necessary, the Commissioner of the league will vote to break the tie. The GFL only employees volunteers who do not receive pay for their work/contributions to the league, the exception to this being the official game

referees A referee is an official, in a variety of sports and competition, responsible for enforcing the rules of the sport, including sportsmanship decisions such as ejection. The official tasked with this job may be known by a variety of other titles ...

. Coaches for the league are volunteers and must be

Heads-Up certified.

References

{{reflist, 2 North American youth sports competitions American football leagues in the United States American football in Utah Youth sport in the United States Sports leagues established in 2015 Non-profit organizations based in Utah Women's sports leagues in the United States High school football in the United States American football competitions in the United States Sports in Salt Lake City 2015 establishments in Utah Women's sports in Utah