How Diane Beruldsen built women’s flag football from the ground up

Diane Beruldsen did not inherit a women’s flag football pipeline; she built one. The International Women’s Flag Football Association says it began as a grass-roots regional group based in New York with fewer than 1,000 women, then became the first international women’s flag football association when Beruldsen founded it on April 1, 1997. That history matters because the sport did not arrive as a finished system. The system was assembled team by team, event by event, and country by country.

Start with local organization

The IWFFA’s history page says there had never been a central organization for women’s flag football until 1995. That gap shaped the work from the beginning: before a bigger federation could speak for the women’s game, Beruldsen had to connect teams, leagues, and players who needed common standards and a place to compete. The association now describes itself as an umbrella organization for women’s and girls’ flag football teams, leagues, and individual players around the world, but its roots were unmistakably local, practical, and built from the bottom up.

That local base is the first lesson in the IWFFA model. A sport grows faster when someone handles the unglamorous work first, scheduling games, organizing travel, and giving players a recognizable circuit. Beruldsen’s organization did not wait for institutional permission to define the women’s game. It made its own structure, then expanded it until the structure looked permanent.

Make governance part of the identity

The IWFFA says it is “for women, run by women,” and that was never just a slogan. It was the organizing principle behind how the sport presented itself, who controlled its calendar, and how legitimacy was built. The group’s mission centers on competition, teamwork, fair play, and the creation of new teams, but it also stresses unifying women through football, which gave the association a social purpose beyond the standings.

Beruldsen’s own framing shows how far that purpose reached. In a 2024 anniversary post, she said the organization had transformed from a tournament-oriented sports organization into a global women’s organization doing humanitarian work using flag football as its vehicle. She also said the group was “building strong women, strong female flag football players,” and increasing the skill level for the sport. On April 2, 2024, the IWFFA marked its 27th anniversary, a marker of how long that women-led model had already lasted.

The governance piece matters because it changed who the sport belonged to. Rather than outsourcing authority to outside institutions, the IWFFA made leadership itself part of the product. That is what gave the association credibility with players who were not just looking for games, but for a framework that understood their needs and treated women’s football as its own category.

Use recurring events to create legitimacy

Recurring events turned that framework into something visible. The IWFFA runs a monthly podcast, On the Air with the IWFFA, which keeps the conversation going between tournaments and gives the sport a consistent voice. Its tournament programs show an equally durable calendar. The 2025 Key West program described the 33rd Kelly McGillis Classic International Female Flag Football Championships, held January 21-27, 2025, while the 2025 Ptown Classic program called that event the 19th IWFFA-Ptown Classic and said eight teams were competing.

Those numbers are more than decoration. A 33rd championship and a 19th classic signal repetition, and repetition is what turns an event into infrastructure. Teams know where they can return, hosts know what they are getting, and players can measure themselves against familiar competition instead of chasing one-off showcases. That steady calendar is one reason the IWFFA’s model feels closer to a federation than a fan club, even though it grew without the advantages of a traditional pipeline.

By 2022, the organization was still expanding and looking to create a new league by 2025. That ambition fits the rest of the IWFFA playbook: keep the schedule alive, keep adding entry points, and make sure the sport has reasons for athletes to come back.

Build international chapter by chapter

The IWFFA’s real reach becomes clearest when the story leaves North America. The organization says it was contacted in 2017 to teach Afghan women flag football, showing that its influence had already moved into international development work. Later, it said it safely evacuated 37 Afghan flag football players and their families to Mexico City on November 16, 2022. On the same page, it said 33 more Afghans were in hiding in Afghanistan.

That episode shows how a sports network can become something more than a sports network. The same organization that runs annual tournaments and a monthly podcast also operated as a support system for women athletes facing life-threatening pressure. For emerging flag programs, that is a reminder that international chapter-building is not only about expansion on a map. It is about relationships, trust, and the ability to mobilize when players need help beyond the field.

The broader ecosystem helped the sport grow

The IWFFA’s own history also points to the people and tools that helped women’s flag football develop outside a formal federation. Its history page references earlier structures such as the National Women’s Flag Football Association. The Porter Wilson Award page adds another layer, noting that Porter Wilson invented Sonic Boom belts and flags, founded Flag-A-Tag, and died in September 2000. That kind of equipment and local-league lineage matters because it shows the women’s game growing through inventors, organizers, and regional networks at the same time.

That broader ecosystem is why Beruldsen’s work still reads like a blueprint. She built a sport with local organizing at the base, woman-led governance at the center, recurring championships as the calendar, and international outreach as the reach. By the time the NFL promoted men’s and women’s flag football for the LA28 Olympic Games in 2024, and NFL clubs voted in May 2025 to allow NFL players to participate in the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, the women’s game already had decades of infrastructure behind it. Beruldsen did not wait for the spotlight to build the house.