Flag football has seen rapid recent expansion. It has even been approved for inclusion in the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Naturally, this is all great news for the NFL as it strives to maximize football’s global exposure.
To do this, the league has created a new executive position: vice president, head of flag football. On Tuesday, the NFL announced it hired Stephanie Kwok, a Stanford alum and Harvard Business School graduate, for this new flag football oversight position.
“Stephanie brings her passion to exponentially expand the game that has taken the sports world by storm and provides the opportunity for all girls, boys, men and women to experience the fun and values of soccer,” said Executive Vice President of Soccer Operations of the NFL, Troy Vincent. in a sentence.
The league sees itself in the midst of an excellent opportunity to continue growing football beyond its traditional on-field approach.
That was made clear at the recent NFL annual meeting, during which former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Steve Young, who recently helped coach his daughters’ freshman girls’ soccer team at Menlo School, along with former 49ers teammate John Paye, he led a panel discussion. focused on the introduction of the sport in the 2028 Olympic Games.
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Now, Kwok’s job is to ensure flag football continues to gain momentum.
“Overall, it’s just about getting more people playing and providing more opportunities for everyone at all levels, making sure it’s not just limited to kids,” Kwok said on a Zoom call Monday. “If girls want to continue playing competitively in high school, in college and now also in the Olympics, suddenly that is something that can be seen as a real aspiration. It’s about growing the game. There is a lot of interest and enthusiasm for it.
“Because it is a very accessible sport. It’s a great opportunity to be able to get more people deeply involved and connected with football. Watching a game with your family and friends is an incredible experience in itself. But what are other ways people can get involved? How can more people experience football in other countries? “I think flag football offers a really amazing way for people to do that.”
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Kwok, a 2008 Stanford graduate, first developed a strong affinity for soccer as a student there and for the next three years lived in nearby San Francisco. Both parents had emigrated from Hong Kong. Her mother and father, Margaret and Daniel, attended Cal and Stanford, respectively.
One of their first dates came at a Big Game, the annual meeting of those two archrivals.
Kwok was born and raised in New York City after his father moved the family there for work. His return to the West Coast to attend college coincided with Stanford’s rise to national prominence under former coach Jim Harbaugh, who later accepted the 49ers job and then the Michigan job before recently returning to the NFL to lead the Los Angeles Chargers.
Kwok vividly remembers Stanford’s 24-23 upset victory over USC in 2007, a game in which the Cardinal entered as a 41-point underdog.
“For me, that’s a defining memory of college,” Kwok said. “Remembering that victory, remembering everyone in the Quad celebrating afterwards.”
But at the time, soccer wasn’t yet an option for Kwok, who was on Stanford’s varsity squash team, to play herself. Unlike now, colleges did not offer an organized version of the flag game (the NAIA began offering women’s flag football in 2021 with support from the NFL).
The closest Kwok got was through club rugby, which he played during his first year on campus.
“You could see that longing for something like football,” Kwok said. “Now there are more opportunities to play flag football in college. “If there was that opportunity, that’s certainly what I would have done.”
Once Kwok enrolled in Harvard Business School three years later, flag football was an official option. Kwok became commissioner of the school’s intramural sports program, in which she played flag football, and she carried her passion for it to post-graduate life in New York.
Outside of work hours, Kwok managed to play recreationally for up to five teams at a time over the past decade. He worked at the New York Knicks and Rangers, FanDuel and then at Reforge, a professional development company.
Now, Kwok is taking advantage of this opportunity with the NFL. It comes about 15 years after she first applied for the league’s Rotational Program as a Stanford undergraduate.
“I’ve been hoping to work in the NFL, so it’s really this coming full circle moment,” Kwok said. “It wasn’t then (with the Rotational Program), but it is now.
“And now is an even better time because there is an opportunity to grow flag football, to grow this game that I have specifically been able to play and that has opened a lot of connections and community doors for me. So working in the NFL is obviously amazing, but being able to work in flag football and increasing access to flag football, which is something I wish I had as a child, when I was a little girl and choosing what sports to play. “That’s a really special opportunity.”
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(Photo: Gary McCullough / Keynote USA)
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