WIAA: Girls Flag Football Approved, New Transfer Rules and Mercy rule for Soccer among approved amendments

4/21/2025

(Renton, WA) The WIAA announced Monday the results of 16 proposed amendments with 7 passing and the others falling short of the 60% minimum vote by the 53-member WIAA Rep Assembly. One that passed will have the WIAA adding their first new sport since 1999 when girls flag football approved.

The other major passage was an update to the transfer rule that has been worked on now for more than a year trying to address the growing changes. And the reps decided it was time to give soccer a mercy rule to avoid over-the-top lopsided scores. The approved amendments will go into effect on August 1st 2025 and be in effect for the 2025-26 season.

Approved Amendments

Girls Flag Football

This is the first new sport the WIAA has added since 1999. The proposal was narrowly defeated last year. The amendment was boosted with the fact that last year in non-sanctioned club activity 90 schools offered girls flag football. The season outlined in the amendment would begin March 2nd and end on May 16. Two other alternate schedules have been included which would be August 25 through October 18 and November 17 through March 1.

Players are eligible to play in up to 4 halves in a day and 32 for the season with a 16 game schedule. Schools can immediately begin to organize and prepare their new teams for the coming season.

Transfer Rules Updated

After more than a year of working through the current transfer rules the 22-member committee came up with an update to try and curb the number of transfers while creating a one-time chance to transfer during a students high school career. The voting members agreed and passed the new update that allows a student a one-time no holds barred transfer.

The new rule goes into effect after an incoming Freshman chooses the High School they are going to attend. After they have entered high school as a 9th grader they will then get one opportunity to transfer to another school without having to move into the new district’s territory. The rule allows the transfer to any other high school during selected time period. The WIAA committee specifically says this is not a transfer portal like the college system but rather a common sense timeline to allow the transfers to occur.

There is a penalty for using the transfer rule and that is the transferring student will be ineligible for 40% of the varsity season in their 1st year at their new school. This will encourage students thinking about transferring to make that decision sooner rather than later. The idea of the penalty is to discourage teams or groups of athletes from all deciding after their junior season to transfer to one school trying to create a super team. It would be difficult to achieve that with multiple athletes not eligible for nearly half the season.

The window of transfer is described as the natural break between each school year or in other words during the summer. This one time opportunity is not offered during the defined school year.

This rule update does not cancel out previous transfer rules such as if a family genuinely moves from one district to another and relocates their household. Those transfers still fall under the current rules already in place.

The WIAA in their news release stated:

“The membership also approved a significant change to transfer eligibility rules. After establishing initial eligibility at a high school, students may now transfer one time during their four-year high school career, but only within designated transfer windows. This is not a “transfer portal” and does not resemble the NCAA’s current model. Under the new rule, a student-athlete who transfers will be ineligible for varsity competition for 40% of the maximum number of allowable contests for sports played the previous year, as defined by each sport’s specific rules, in the school year following the transfer. This amendment is the result of a 22-person committee, established in January 2024, which evaluated how WIAA eligibility policies align with Washington State education goals and objectives, and whether existing policies disproportionately impact students.”

Again, these rules go into effect on August 1, 2025 so that would give student athletes a few weeks to put in for their transfer going into next school year.

Soccer gets Mercy Rule

The Rep assembly also liked the idea of ending out of control soccer matches. Some of the pushback had been soccer is already on a running clock with limited stoppage time added so there was no need to end a match early. In football and basketball if a team leads by 40 or more points a running clock is then instituted to run the clock faster than normal and end the game sooner as the outcome has been determined.

There is no way to speed up a running clock that soccer already utilizes so the new rule going in will be any team with an 8 or more goal lead after 60 minutes of play the match will be ended. This will stop games from getting completely out of control when the outcome is clear.

Failed Amendments

Transgender Proposals

Among the amendments that failed included two that were aimed at transgender athletes. One stated that girls sports would be only for biologically born female athletes and another amendment would add another category male, female and an open category.

Both amendments failed. The votes were only advisory anyway because of state law. The WIAA has stated they will follow state law but if the law is changed they have some guiding principals the membership made clear with the proposed amendments. The WIAA says if the law is changed they would again offer options to the membership which would include leaving the rules as is.

The WIAA says they are a democratic process organization and that the membership will be the ones to determine what rules will best retain the mission of the WIAA to support all students in their journey through sports and activities.

Amendments to add regular season games

There were amendments to add games to the regular season of baseball, fastpitch, slowpitch and soccer. In the diamond amendment for baseball and the two softballs the request was asking for 2 more regular season games pushing it to a 22 game season.

In the pitch amendment for soccer the ask was also for 2 more matches extending the regular season from 16 to 18 matches.

Both amendments failed continuing the precedent of denying extended regular seasons to most sports seeking additional regular season games. The last sport to get additional games was Volleyball that went from 16 to 18. One of the issues was Volleyball could play more than 1 match in a single day which happens regularly when playing in invitationals and tournaments during the regular season.

Basketball has attempted to add games multiple times but has been denied each vote. By adding games there is also a financial cost of hiring officials, folks who have to handle each game, custodian and clean-up work which made it even more difficult to get support during this time of economic and budget uncertainty.

Exec Board Members re-elected

Two of the 12-member Executive Board were re-elected to their positions. Jeff Lowell (Bellevue School District, WIAA District 2) and Russ Waterman (Eastmont High School, WIAA District 5) were re-elected to represent their areas on the board.