In Israel’s Summer Olympic History, the country has collected 20 medals – 18 of them individual medals and none of them in team sports. But a sport being added in Los Angeles in 2028 happens to be one that Israel is among the world’s best in – flag football – and the future of that program will be in Minnesota in the beginning of April.
The Israeli boys under-17 flag football team – the defending European champions in their age group – will be taking part in events at the Minnesota Vikings’ Eagan campus.
April 2 is a dinner and fundraiser at the Minnesota Vikings Museum featuring former Vikings players, a panel discussion, and a silent auction. April 3, features an open practice and scrimmage against the USA under-17 boys flag football team at 4:30 p.m. at TCO Stadium on the Vikings’ campus. Tickets are free but must be reserved online.
The events in Minnesota – and a fundraiser in the Chicago suburbs on April 6 as the team heads back to Israel – is the first of several big events for the Israel Flag Football program this year as it tries to qualify for the 2028 Olympics.
“[Vikings owner] Mark Wilf has been very, very supportive,” said Steve Leibowitz, the founder of American Football in Israel. “He’s fully committed to the Olympic quest each year from now until the Olympics. He and Robert Kraft (the owner of the New England Patriots) are helping us. I’m pushing for more help because, right now, I can’t tell my players to quit their jobs to become full-time Olympic athletes. And that’s what I’m expecting them to become. But I have to make sure they can feed their families.”
The connection was furthered last spring, when Emily Weinberg, the youth and high school football coordinator for the Vikings, was part of the JCRC’s annual day-trip to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which former Viking and Chicago Bear Brent Novoselsky was also a part of.
“We started talking about ways that we could engage with Team Israel, not only in Chicago, which is what he’s worked on in the past, but here in Minnesota, especially with our ties to the team already,” Weinberg said.
Weinberg said it wasn’t enough just to have the Israelis come to the Vikings facility, but the importance of helping them have high-level competition.
“With [Team Israel] being a gold-medal winning team, we wanted to make sure they had a team to go up against that was of the same caliber,” she said. “So we started working with our partners at USA Football to see what opportunities there might be to bring their teams out and provide them with a truly world-class experience so they could practice and hone their skills.”
Novoselsky, who made his first trip to Israel last March, got a first-hand look at the growing football infrastructure in Israel.
“I’m a firm believer that if you build a good flag system, you can get guys that aren’t going to play tackle football,” he said. “Plus, you can get girls to play. They’re football players. And you can have this all the way through high school, college and beyond. I just think football’s football. And that I push that along is huge to me.”
Exponential growth
The growth in flag football is happening at a time when football in general is growing around the world. This coming season, the NFL will play games in Brazil, Ireland, England and Germany, and players with international ties have decals of the flags of those countries on the backs of their helmets for several years. But flag football also offers greater opportunities and access at a fraction of the cost of tackle football.
“I’ve seen it go from this really well kept secret, where there was a small amount of players, a small amount of leagues, to now it being a lot more popular,” said Dani Eastman, who plays for Israel’s national team in both tackle and flag football, and is the defensive coordinator of the U-17 flag team that’s coming to Eagan. “It’s definitely become more popular, especially with the American kids who come over here for Yeshiva to study. These kids all know about it. There’s this huge league of 60 teams, and if you talk to kids in the States before they come here, other yeshiva people have already talked to them and trying to pull them onto teams.”
Flag football is a five-on-five game played on a 50-yard by 25-yard field. The only equipment needed is the football and a belt with two flags attached. When the flag is ripped off the belt, the play ends.
The game is predicated on speed and agility rather than size, which gives the Israelis an advantage they wouldn’t get in tackle football.
“If you placed 40 Israeli national team [tackle players] on one side of a boat and 40 Hungarians on another, the boat is going to tip quickly,” Eastman said with a laugh. “There’s a size advantage that we just don’t have [in tackle], but in flag, there’s a huge advantage in our favor that size is almost irrelevant.
“When you only need to field your best 12 from your country, it gives you a better chance as a smaller country.”
Leibowitz helped the game take off in Israel when he was the news editor of The Nation, which he called a competitor to the Jerusalem Post. Armed Forces TV put a satellite dish on the roof of the building where The Nation was headquartered, and Leibovitz, who made aliyah from Queens, knew there were a lot of Americans who wanted to watch football.
“We pirated the signal and set up a private club called Sports Center, and we got hundreds of people to come and pay 10 or 20 shekels, depending on the game,” he recalled. “And as we were all sitting there and talking and watching games and this and that, we all said, Hey, why don’t we play there’s already a softball league. Why don’t we have a football league? And so we started a touch football league.”
The nascent league had eight teams, but suitable field space was tough to find – which is where Robert Kraft comes in. Kraft was recognized in the lobby of the King David hotel by one of Leibowitz’s players – who was working as a concierge.
“He walked over to [Kraft], and he said, ‘Do you know that there’s American football in Israel?” Leibowitz said. “Kraft said, ‘I didn’t know. Have the guy in charge get in touch with me.”
Leibowitz got out his typewriter and sent the Patriots’ owner a letter. At the same time he got then-Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert to give him land in the northern tip of Jerusalem that was unsuitable for most sport and was being used for archery, on the condition that he was able to get it redeveloped. Leibowitz went to Boston with a plan for Kraft, and in 1999, the field was dedicated.
Earlier in March, the field reopened after being closed for seven years. What’s there now is a $3 million two field flag football facility with 450 seats. It’s across the street from the train station, and on top of an 18-meter deep water reservoir for the city of Jerusalem; the field was rebuilt on top of that.
‘Hebrew in the huddle’
Eastman, who made aliyah 17 years ago from Baltimore, was a player in the first year of high school tackle football in Israel.
“We literally cut pads off of a guardrail to fill our pants. It was not a real league yet,” he said. “It was nonsense.”
Even seven years ago, Eastman said that the majority of players in Israeli leagues have some connection to American – either someone who has made aliyah or a student coming to study at yeshiva. Now, the number of native Israelis in Israeli leagues are growing.
“It’s now Hebrew in the huddle,” Leibowitz said. The team coming to the U.S. is made up largely of teens from Kiryat Ono and Ramat HaSharon. “I don’t know if a dozen people in the entire town of Kiryat Ono speak English.”
The under-17 team has been prolific. Their only loss in European competition came because of a forfeit because they wouldn’t play against Serbia in a game scheduled on Shabbat. Israel got out of the group play to make the semifinals, where the team defeated Italy before beating Serbia 34-13 in the final.
At the senior level, the Israel men’s team finished ninth at the 2024 World Championship, winning both group games before losing to Canada in the round of 16. The team is ranked eighth in the world, but will likely need to reach the top six to make the Olympics in 2028. Jonathan Tekac, a former player at Youngstown State and the head coach of the men’s senior team, said the goal is to make the podium at both this fall’s European Championship and the 2026 World Championship.
“We have to take an approach, just like a professional team, in how we evaluate with players statistically, with the Combine testing, with film, analyzing the length of their arms, the height; all of these things are matter on on the field,” Tekac said. “But obviously, you’ve got to make plays at the end of the day.”
The players coming to the U.S. might be in line to part of the Olympic team for Israel should they qualify. If they’re good enough, they’re old enough.
“Josh Leventhal was one year removed from under-17 gold and he made our 12-man roster for the [senior] World Championships as our starting snapper,” Tekac said. “He was tremendous. He was making people look silly. [The current under-17s] see that and they’re hungry.”
Eastman said that while he enjoys working with all the coaches, he credits the athletes for making things happen.
“We’ve had a few special groups of kids who are determined to face competition that is sometimes a lot bigger than they are,” Eastman said. “They’ve proven it, time and again, they can ball out. These kids have been unbelievable.”
