After years cheering from the stands, a Houston father says he’d do it differently today — flag football first, tackle later.

As summer turns to fall, roughly 1.2 million U.S. teens are suiting up to play high school football. But something is shifting in this annual autumn rite. Tens of thousands of those young athletes are ...

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — For Gibbs middle schooler, Ayda Alewine, football started out as snack-filled evenings and late-night bonding with her dad. But as she grew older, so did her love for the game — ...