Want the latest Bay Area sports news delivered to your inbox? Sign up here to receive regular email newsletters, including “The Dime.”

Matt Robins wasn’t keeping official stats last season — at first. But after watching sophomore quarterback Bren David repeatedly throw perfect spirals 40 yards down the field and hit her receivers in stride, while scrambling, he realized it was time to start tracking the numbers.

The very first time the Milpitas High School girls’ flag football coach submitted stats to MaxPreps, a four-game stretch in which David completed 50 of 77 passes for 14 touchdowns earned her the publication’s National Player of the Week honor. In just a single season, David became one of the fast-growing sport’s biggest local stars.

“Bren throws so well that our boys team invited her to throw in their 7-on-7 scrimmages this summer,” Robbins said. “I was afraid they were going to try and recruit her for the team.” 

David had never played flag football before last year. But with her field vision, arm strength, and the shifty mobility of a “ninja,” according to Robbins, she looks like the kind of athlete colleges would line up to offer — if those opportunities existed.

“I think colleges are starting to be open-minded about the sport, but so far, I don’t know that there are any with a flag program,” David said. “Hopefully when I graduate or even before, they will start offering scholarships for flag.” 

A national women’s flag football team competes annually in world championships, and the U.S. will field a squad for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, but opportunities are limited to the top 15 to 20 players in the country. There’s no league on the scale of the WNBA or NWSL, but given the trajectory of women’s sports, it could soon exist. And when it does, it’ll have the Bay Area to thank.

David’s rapid ascent coincides with the region’s sudden emergence as the capital of women’s sports. The NWSL’s newest organization, Bay FC, and the WNBA’s youngest franchise, the Golden State Valkyries, are in their infancy, yet the startup teams have been embraced by local fans as if they’ve been part of the region’s sports fabric all along.

With the success of the expansion franchises, there’s a real sense that women’s sports are enjoying a breakthrough moment in Northern California, and nationwide. Bay FC CEO Brady Stewart prefers a different way of describing this new era: a movement. 

“The rocket ship is going to the stratosphere,” she said. 

That embrace is easy to feel. Not just in ticket and merchandise sales, or in the team’s exploding valuations, but all around PayPal Park in San Jose and Chase Center in San Francisco, where the fan energy and support is deeply personal.

When Santa Cruz local and longtime soccer fan Katie Greenwald heard about Bay FC’s launch in 2024, she was quick to put down a deposit for season tickets.

“Our day-to-day lives can be hard. We need moments in time where we can just cheer each other on and support women. I’m all about it,” Greenwald said before Bay FC’s recent game against the San Diego Wave.

That sentiment is echoed around Thrive City before every Valkyries game.

“I’ve been a basketball fan my whole life — the Golden State Warriors, of course, for 35 years,” said Steff Brunson, a Valkyries season-ticket holder from Santa Rosa.  “Having a women’s team in the Bay Area means everything to me, because I’m now represented.”

Parents are making a point of taking their children to Valkyries and Bay FC games so they can see women compete at the highest level, an opportunity that wasn’t available to previous generations. 

“We are huge sports fans, so we are so happy that there’s a women’s team for her to see and watch and aspire to,” said Vicky Wang, standing beside her 10-year-old daughter Angela — a point guard herself, proudly wearing a Kaitlyn Chen Valkyries jersey.

Six U.S. metropolitan areas host both a WNBA and an NWSL team. With the Portland Fire set to join the WNBA next year, that number will grow to seven. But when it comes to fan support, none come close to rivaling the Bay Area. 

“When you look around the world, the Bay Area is leading the way in women’s sports with incredibly successful franchises that started back-to-back years,” Stewart said. “It’s very unique, it’s very special, and I think it deserves to be celebrated.”

In its inaugural season, Bay FC finished in the top five of NWSL teams in average home attendance. And on Saturday, with more than 35,000 tickets already sold, a match against the Washington Spirit at Oracle Park will break the league’s single-game attendance record.

Inside Chase Center, Valkyries head coach Natalie Nakase and WNBA Most Improved Player candidate Veronica Burton call Golden State fans the team’s “superpower.” The team has sold out all 17 home games this season in an arena that has one of the largest capacities in the WNBA. 

“The city is diverse, it’s queer, and it’s very forward-thinking. Those are all things that women’s sports are really pushing for, and San Francisco is a hub,” said fan Kyle Silva, sitting in Thrive City before a game. “Here is where they can thrive because there are a lot of people who will support the things that they want to try and push forward.” 

The women’s sports surge isn’t restricted to professional sports. It’s gaining serious momentum at local high schools, too. Case in point: girls flag football. 

The sport was officially sanctioned at the high school level in California in 2023 — and has since become one of the nation’s fastest-growing games. According to the California Interscholastic Federation, around 10,000 girls statewide participated in the inaugural season, signaling a major shift in interest and access for young female athletes.

At Milpitas High in the South Bay, the flag football program launched in 2023 as a club team with just 12 players. In 2024, the team was upgraded to the varsity level — and drew more than 40 girls to tryouts. 

“My daughter is actually the one who recruited me,” Robbins said of Hannah, a senior. “And I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, my high school daughter wants to be seen with me? At school? I’m in!” 

A similar trend has occurred at high schools across the Bay Area, including San Francisco’s Lowell High, where player turnout has increased to the point that coach Bill Woodruff will roster 45 to 50 players and is seeking competition beyond his regular-season schedule so that more girls have opportunities to play.

In just two years, the quality and quantity of players interested in participating in the sport has been transformative. The next step? Creating higher-level opportunities for girls flag football stars — the same kind that now exist for peers playing basketball and soccer.

“Some of the pioneers of [flag football] in high school, the structure won’t be in place for [them] yet,” Robbins said. “So they’re always like, ‘I’m just a couple years too early, and then hopefully those opportunities come.’ ”

But it’s indisputable that change is coming; all you need to do is look at the landscape filled with Valkyries and Bay FC supporters. 

“I’m impressed, but also not surprised, by how much the Bay Area has shown up,” said Jeni Kim, a Valkyries season ticket holder from Lafayette. “I think what it really shows is that in this day and time, and in the culture that we live in, there are major cities all across America that are thirsty for this — the connection, the energy.”