UBC won’t have a women’s flag football team in inaugural U Sports season

For only the second time since revising its sport model program in 2019, U Sports is adding a new sport to its lineup: women’s flag football.

As announced by Canadian university sport’s main governing body on June 3, women’s flag football will make its debut as the 24th U Sports sport in the 2027–28 season, becoming the second “pilot sport” in the U Sports system. Under U Sports’ sport model program, pilot sport status is the entry point to becoming a full-time, U Sports-governed sport. As a pilot sport, women’s flag football won’t have the same status as U Sports’ “core sports,” like basketball, hockey and volleyball. Through a partnership with Football Canada, however, it will now compete at the highest level of university sport in the country.

While membership is initially temporary and must be re-evaluated after three to five years, the sport can move up in the system to “invitational sport” status if the trial period is successful. That aside, for now, they are in. In a little more than a year, at least eight Canadian universities will come together to compete for the first ever official U Sports women's flag football national championship. UBC won’t be one of them.

The simple reason? There just isn’t a team. At least not yet.

While U Sports has not had an official championship for the sport until now, Canadian universities have been playing women’s flag. In fact, pre-existing competition is essentially a requirement for U Sports to admit a new sport. The pilot sport program allows U Sports to trial new sports, a resource-intensive undertaking that is only possible with the support of a pre-existing National Sport Organization. In essence, U Sports takes a step back, and the NSO still operates the sport and its championship, but in return, the sport competes under the much more recognizable U Sports brand, with the potential of moving up the ladder in future years.

Before a sport like women’s flag can be admitted, U Sports first requires the sport’s governing body — in this case, Football Canada — to complete an extensive 11-page application for pilot sport status. The onus is on the NSO not only to provide a framework for the competition, but also a competition that is sustainable. So while U Sports allows plans for theoretical national championships to be submitted, they are clear that before an application is submitted, “a successful university national championship should be in place.”

To meet that requirement, Football Canada began administering the Canadian Collegiate Flag Football Championship in 2022, bringing together the few women’s flag football teams that already existed within universities across the country to compete for recognition as the best team in Canada.

Football Canada’s then-president Jim Mullin noted that, in running this event, their goal was to “continue to engage with Canadian university football conferences to get varsity recognition for women’s flag football nationwide.” They wanted women’s flag football to become a part of U Sports. They needed to run an event like this to have a chance of getting in. Now, they have.

But UBC never participated in any of those tournaments. U Sports member schools like the University of Montréal and the University of Regina played in the first four editions of the championship. With that championship now folded into U Sports, those teams will continue to play for the title, but this time, as a U Sports team. So, the question isn’t “why won’t UBC field a U Sports women’s flag team?” It’s “why wasn’t there a UBC women’s flag team to begin with?” and “why didn’t UBC compete in the Collegiate Championship?”

Answering those questions requires a look at how new sports teams are created at UBC, and the conditions that must be met in order for a team to compete as the Thunderbirds. That brings us to the Thunderbird Sports Club program.

Thunderbirds Sports Clubs act as an in-between — they occupy a middle ground between varsity athletics and recreational sports. Unlike varsity programs, which receive full funding from the university and UBC Athletics, TSCs are mostly student-led and must fund and govern themselves. But they also operate above intramurals and AMS clubs. TSCs compete under the Thunderbird name, travel both within Canada and internationally and receive some administrative support from UBC Athletics and Recreation.

There are currently 17 TSC teams set to compete next year, ranging from equestrian to quadball. UBC fields varsity teams in all 14 of the U Sports “core sports” it competes in. But of the seven “partnership sports” — which include both pilot and invitational sports that continue to operate alongside an NSO — six of UBC’s teams are TSCs.

Essentially, just as U Sports doesn’t have the money and resources to commit to all 23 — soon to be 24 — sports, neither does UBC. Just as partnership sports exist to allow certain sports to compete under the U Sports banner that may have otherwise not been able to, so do TSCs allow teams at UBC to compete as the Thunderbirds, without meeting the lofty criteria for varsity status.

In order for UBC to field a women’s flag football team, they would most likely have to do so as a TSC. But there is no women’s flag football TSC. To make that team a reality, the initiative has to come from the students. According to Stephanie Jameson, the manager of competitive sports clubs for UBC Athletics & Recreation, there hasn’t been a push for a women’s flag team — at least, not yet.

“I've been here for almost five years and I've never heard from a women's flag football group,” she said. “I've heard from some of my colleagues that some groups have been in touch with the department, so it sounds like there are people out there. But I'm keen to see what comes of this in the next couple of years [to] see if they put forward an application.”

To become a TSC, a team first has to apply. Applications generally open every two years, with a six-month process between when the TSC office first accepts applications and when offers are sent.

Because these groups are student-led, the TSC office needs to ensure they can stand on their own, with confidence in the team’s leadership, financial sustainability and competition structure. It’s a long process that’s “pretty rigorous,” according to Jameson, but it’s due diligence for the department. To make it through that process, there are some key criteria the groups have to meet.

First, a team must already exist as an AMS club on campus, typically for at least two years. That experience as a club allows the TSC committee to evaluate “what [the team has] already done, as opposed to … ‘here's what we plan to do,’ which is hard to evaluate.” Along with meeting other basic benchmarks, such as being financially self-sustaining and having access to a training facility, teams are graded on a matrix, with nine categories, each graded from one (“below expectations”) to five (“exceeds expectations”). From there, the committee decides who to admit.

The most recent application cycle concluded in February 2026, with squash and wrestling both being admitted to the program. Both obviously had successful applications — but for different reasons.

Wrestling was able to draw on both a long history of success — dating back to when they were a varsity program in the 1980s — and a strong membership base. The club had applied previously to the program before without being admitted, but this time, they impressed the committee. “They just came forward with the full package of ‘we're doing this, we think we're ready,’ and that was pretty evident to us,” said Jameson.

Squash is a different story. They don’t have the history that wrestling does. As Jameson put it, they’re more of an “emerging sport,” and even in their experience as an AMS club, the team was lacking, having only formed in September 2024, short of the typical two years of club experience expected in a TSC application. But they excelled in every other category. Their application was organized and detailed, the leadership was strong and they had the support of the local squash community. “Their group of students [were] just really on point,” said Jameson. So despite not having the most experience, squash was in.

Both of these recent admissions inform what a potential women’s flag football application might look like.

The first thing to consider for a potential women’s flag team is the timeline. When might they start play? While the two-year cycle isn’t set in stone, as Jameson emphasized, to look at the hypothetical and project that timeline forward, it means the next potential application window will be in late 2027, with competition beginning in the 2028–29 season — one year after women’s flag will debut in U Sports. The biggest hurdle to that timeline, however, is the experience factor.

There currently isn’t a women’s flag football AMS club on campus. While women’s flag may exist in intramural sport, or in casual pick-up games across UBC, the AMS club directory lists no women’s flag football groups — which helps explain the lack of applications for a women’s flag TSC. If a club is to be founded at the start of the upcoming academic term, they’d only have about a year of experience before the next application window rolls around. While it’s still possible to get in, as squash demonstrated this year, it’s a high bar.

So, perhaps the more realistic timeline may be: an AMS club is formed at some point this year, they spend the next three years developing into a TSC-calibre program and they apply in the 2029 application cycle. That would ensure a UBC women’s flag team takes the field in the 2030–31 season — obviously, assuming that a group forms in the first place.

This delay raises a question, though. As one of the most athletically successful universities in the country, how long can UBC sit out on a sport competing under the U Sports banner? After all, UBC competes in 21 of the 23 sports recognized by U Sports, with the only two exceptions (men’s and women’s track and field) competing under the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, a separate athletic governing body in the United States. If UBC doesn’t field a women’s flag football team, it would be the only sport of the now 24 they have no presence in.

But, as wrestling shows, U Sports status alone doesn’t guarantee a team. While wrestling ceased to be a varsity sport at UBC in 1987, U Sports competition continued.

Barring a two-year hiatus for COVID-19, a national wrestling championship has continued to be held in Canada every year since, with no UBC representation at the U Sports level. Before wrestling’s return to U Sports for next season, UBC spent almost 40 years without a representative in U Sports. In other words, UBC is okay waiting. “It’s definitely not, ‘oh, they're in U Sports, let's get them in.’ It's more so, ‘let's make sure all the other pieces are in place,’” said Jameson.

Competition structure is one of the criteria that the TSC committee looks at during admissions, and U Sports is “very well organized, so that's just a really great checkbox for us.” But it’s just one of the many factors to consider.

U Sports will hold its first ever women’s flag football season in 2027. UBC will not be there. But later down the line, that could change. It’s all up to the students. “The most important thing is to formalize yourselves as an AMS club,” said Jameson. “Start operating, get the feel for what it's like to lead a student club and recruit your athletes.”

From there, who knows where the sport might grow. U Sports’ move to include women’s flag as a pilot sport is monumental for its status in Canada, but women’s flag is growing beyond just that.

In NAIA, women’s flag has been sponsored as an “emerging” sport since 2021, and will become a full, official sport next season. In the NCAA, the largest collegiate sports governing body in the United States, the Committee on Access, Opportunity and Impact voted this May to recommend a national collegiate championship be held by the spring of 2028. Perhaps most importantly, women’s flag football will be featured at the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, joining the Olympic program for the first time, alongside men’s flag.

There are now more opportunities for women’s flag football to thrive as a sport than ever before. And despite the current lack of a team, that’s still true at UBC.

“We're just doing our best to continue to provide opportunities, even if it's challenging financially,” said Jameson. “I'm excited. I mean, as a female athlete and a varsity alum from women's field hockey, it's so exciting to see more opportunities for women in sports.”