By Kim J. Harmon

A couple of dozen kids have been running around and having a lot of fun for the past few weeks on the upper field at Newtown High School, engaged in a sport – flag football – that has roots going back almost 180 years.

The game of football has been around in some fashion since sophomores at Harvard University challenged the freshmen to a game of “ball” back on the first Monday of the academic year in 1829.

That first game was very unorganized as dozens of young men – there were no limitations on how many could be on the field – did little more than kick around an inflated pig’s bladder (hence the word, pigskin) and beat each other up.

The game became an annual tradition, but it was so violent that the day became known as “Bloody Monday” and that Harvard eventually banned the game altogether.

Tackle football remained – and always will remain – a brutal contact sport.

Which makes flag football such an enjoyable offshoot.

Apparently, flag football was developed on military bases back in the 1940s as a form of safe, injury-free recreation for the personnel. Fort Meade in Maryland has been credited as being the site of the first recorded instance of a flag football game.

The game is similar in concept to tackle football except that, instead of tackling players (which is a personal foul), the defensive team has to remove the flag or flag belt from the player holding the football.

Flag football is generally accepted as a non-contact sport, but – of course – those blocking for the quarterback or runner invariably are involved in some contact. While the game is common in middle school and high school gyms across the country, flag football is now a state-sanctioned high school sport in Florida and offers its own state championship.

There is actually a United States Flag Football Association, which offers a basic set of rules and guidelines that govern the side of the field, the size of the goal posts, the number of officials, the equipment (i.e., ball), number of players on the field, substitutions, length of the game, and the various infractions within the game.

But these are just guidelines since there are many different variations of the game chiefly relating to the size of the teams, the size of the field, whether or not everyone is eligible to catch a pass, and whether or not any contact at all is allowed.

There are several national and international competitions every year, according to an entry on Wikipedia, including the World Cup of Flag Football. The United States has won five titles while Canada, Mexico and St. Croix have won one each. Mexico has won six women’s championships and the United States has won just one.

The National Football League gets involved, as well, with sponsoring the Youth World Championships for players ages 12 to 13. The championships have been held in Canada (Toronto and Vancouver), Germany, Mexico, Tokyo and China.

A number of different semi-pro and pro leagues have formed over the years, like the United States Flag Touch Football League, the American Flag Touch Football League, the United States Flag Football League and the Professional Flag Football League.

In 1999, the PFFL played the first ever professional flag football travel schedule with teams in Buffalo, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo and Indianapolis. While Cleveland had the best overall record, three teams folded before the season ended and Cleveland and Buffalo were unable to get together for the PFFL championship game.

Professionally, it appears flag football will never take off. But it remains a popular sport in middle school and high school gyms across the nation – not to mention a small upper field at a school in Newtown, Connecticut.