Powderpuff (sports)

In the United States and Canada, powderpuff football games are flag football or touch football games between girls from junior and senior classes or cross-town school rivals. Funds from the ticket and concession sales for the game typically go to charity, the senior class, or to a dance. The games are an annual tradition at many high schools and universities.

The term originates from the powder puff, the soft material used for the application of cosmetic face powder. The games usually occur before homecoming.

Many schools that participate in powderpuff games have created their own traditions. Some examples of traditions that make the event more entertaining for students are the creation of team uniform T-shirts for each of the classes, pre-game pep talks to get everyone "pumped", and special half-time performances from the class's male members, sometimes with them dressing up in female clothing.

It is not clear when the first powderpuff football game was played, although there is photographic evidence of it being played as early as 1931 at Western State College of Colorado (now Western State Colorado University) in Gunnison, Colorado.

One of the first well-documented powderpuff football games was played on October 20, 1945, at Eastern State Teachers College, in Madison, South Dakota. Eastern had cancelled many campus activities for the duration of World War II. Among these were the annual homecoming celebration and intercollegiate sports, including football With the signing of the peace treaty with Japan on September 2, 1945, and the war’s official end, Homecoming was again on the schedule at Eastern. The traditional football game seemed out of the question, however, due to the wartime military draft. Just three men had enrolled for the fall term that year.

"A bunch of us were sitting around after gym class and we thought, if we’re going to have Homecoming, we've got to have a football game," said Susie Lowry, who was a freshman at Eastern in 1945. "We decided we should have a game of our own."

Robert C. Nelles, a freshman at Eastern that year, was on the Homecoming committee. The very idea of women playing football "was enough to curl your teeth", he wrote in an account of the game for the History of Lake County, but the committee nonetheless gave its approval for a game with all women players.

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