Anyone who has participated in, watched or even taken notice of the Kelly McGillis Classic, the annual women’s flag football tournament in Key West the last week of January for the past 30+ years, is familiar with the name Diane Beruldsen.
The Key West resident is the creator of the tournament and the founder of the International Women’s Flag Football Association, having put the fastest-growing sport on the map all over the world. And as of last month, Beruldsen was officially named the “mother of flag football.”
She was invited to Arizona last month for a ceremony honoring the late “father of flag football,” Porter Wilson, who died in 2000.
Wilson was a physical education teacher in Arizona who invented the flag-a-tag belts that are still used today. Wilson’s invention created uniformity in the game, as every flag requires a 7-pound pulling force to be removed from the belt, Beruldsen told the Keys Weekly.
“Porter Wilson and his wife were actually the very first sponsors of the Kelly McGillis Classic, and he and his wife used to come to Key West for the tournament.”
Flag football is played by an estimated 2.4 million kids nationwide, and was recently added to the Olympic Games for the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
Beruldsen’s love affair with the sport began in 1978, when she began playing on a women’s team in her native Brooklyn. In 1985, she launched the Brooklyn Women’s Flag Football League to encourage competition among other teams. And in 1990, she expanded the league to include all five boroughs of New York City and some teams in New Jersey, she said.
Beruldsen moved to the Florida Keys in 1990 and taught physical education. In 1992 she launched the first Key West Women’s Flag Football tournament. Beruldsen expanded the sport in 1995, when she set off on a summer road trip “to see what was out there for women’s flag football.”
That was before cell phones, so Beruldsen would stop at gas station pay phones to check her messages. She’d visit city parks and recreation departments all over the country, “and I’d actually approach women’s softball teams to see if those players were interested, and often they were.”
The mission kept growing. In 2009, Beruldsen approached Randy Acevedo, at the time the superintendent of schools in Monroe County, who authorized her to invite girls to join youth teams.
“I was adamant from the start that I wanted moms to coach instead of dads,” Beruldsen said. She recalled a game at which one team was coached by a dad. His team won by a score of 54-0, and he later apologized to the other coach.
“Conversely, during a game coached by two moms, one of the teams was short a player, and the other coach offered to loan one of her players to the other team,” Beruldsen said.
“And we’ve always had female officials,” she said, adding that the sport is always free for any girl who wants to participate. She holds regular officiating clinics for people with absolutely no prior knowledge of football — flag or tackle — to learn the rules. There are dozens of girls flag football teams in the Keys.
And that doesn’t even begin to describe Beruldsen’s efforts to make the International Women’s Flag Football Association an actual international organization.
She has traveled to more than a dozen countries, from all of Scandinavia to Afghanistan and to some of the poorest countries of Central America, teaching the sport, forming teams, training officials and finding ways to bring those new teams to Key West for the annual tournament.
The mission of the aassociation is “to provide an opportunity for all females regardless of race, nationality, age, skill level, economic status or sexual orientation to enjoy healthy competition, have fun and develop teamwork skills. Our goal is to educate and assist our players through our tournaments, clinics and promotional tours while building self-esteem, confidence and leadership skills.”
“We are not just a sports organization. We are a women’s empowerment organization who uses flag football as the vehicle to bring equality to women around the world,” states the organization’s website — the organization that was created by the newly named “mother of flag football,” Key West’s own Diane Beruldsen.
