Girls flag football, pickleball coming to KHSAA in 2027-28 school year
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- KHSAA board voted to sanction girls flag football and pickleball starting in 2027-28
- Pickleball season and state tournament will be played in the fall.
- Classification as sport or sport-activity is still under discussion.
Coming soon from the Kentucky High School Athletic Association: state-sponsored championships in girls flag football and pickleball.
Its board of control voted Wednesday to sanction both competitions. Rules and implementation timelines for both sports will be drawn up ahead of the KHSAA’s forthcoming board meeting to kick off the 2026-27 school year.
Nearly half the respondents and a third of the KHSAA’s membership expressed interest in the sanctioning of pickleball during the latest triennial survey that weighs the addition of new sports and sport-activities. Of the 214 survey-question respondents, 102 voted “yes” for a state pickleball tournament beginning in either the 2027-28 or 2028-29 school year.
One hundred schools were in favor of girls flag football with some caveats; about 40% of the “yes” votes endorsed either a spring or fall season, but not both.
The KHSAA requires a “yes” from 15% of its total member schools — currently 293 — to advance discussion on the sanctioning of a new championship.
The pickleball season and state tournament will be played in the fall, complementing the spring tennis season. Flag football will be held as part of the spring sports season; 89 of the 100 “yes” voters” were in favor of either season or spring. It’s to be determined whether pickleball will be a co-ed sport or have girls and boys championships, Tackett said.
Donna Moir, a member of the KHSAA Board of Control and the athletic director at Sacred Heart Academy, said the flag football has been popular at her school. Sacred Heart in the fall played in the semifinals of the Kentucky High School Girls Flag Football Association state tournament. Its rival, Assumption, defeated Mercy in a championship game held at the University of Louisville’s L&N Stadium.
“It was neat to put it on a big stage, and we had big crowds,” Moir said. “I’m looking forward to it.”
A few small colleges in Kentucky have added women’s flag football to their varsity sports offerings in recent years. Multiple Division I schools have set target dates for its addition by the end of the decade. The sport will be included in the 2028 Olympic Games scheduled to be held in Los Angeles, and the NFL the same year is expecting to launch a pro league for men and women.
Pickleball, a paddle sport similar to tennis but played on a smaller court with a perforated plastic ball, has soared in popularity since the turn of the decade. Participation data from the Sports & Fitness Industry Association last year showed that it was the fastest-growing sport in the U.S. for a fourth consecutive year, and that its participation was up more than 300% from just three years before.
Kentucky will be among the first states in the country to offer pickleball at the varsity level.
“We’re early adopted on pickleball and kind of in the middle of the pack on flag,” KHSAA Commissioner Julian Tackett said. “Girls flag has been a point of emphasis for the NFL for a while. … The biggest thing that changed with pickleball is, while a lot of people are talking about it now, for a long time folks at the national tennis organizations kind of objected to it. Now they’re willing to convert courts and all this other stuff. It’ll be interesting to see how things go the next four or five years.”
The board’s vote to sanction a pickleball championship was split 11-6, with Tackett among the “no” votes.
“We’re excited about the opportunity for students but worried about the load on our administrators,” Tackett said. “But those very administrators are the ones that keep voting (things) in.”
During a work session Tuesday ahead of Wednesday’s formal meeting, there was discussion about widening the period of time between surveys to help alleviate concerns about implementation of new events and encourage better evaluation of them.
“If we’re asking too often, we may be inviting public pressure on these people to say, ‘OK, yeah, I’ll do it,’” Tackett said. “ … We really haven’t even had full adjustment time for our athletic administrators with the adoption of lacrosse and boys volleyball. They’re pressured back home, and they’ve got people that want to do it, and some of them are young and full of vinegar. And that’s kind of why you exist as a membership organization.”
Still up for discussion is whether these competitions will be classified as sports or sport-activities. The most notable distinction between those categories is how the organization’s transfer rules are applied are KHSAA Bylaw 6, which governs transfers between schools. Sport-activities are not subject to it.
Six KHSAA events are classified as sport-activities: archery, bass fishing, bowling, competitive cheer, dance and esports.
“We try to keep in mind that we’re in a very mobile time for students. So we really need to have a reason if we’re adding something to the transfer restrictions, that it’s a sport in need of transfer control,” Tackett said. “And schools may think they do, that’s why we just need to find out what they want.”
