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From flag football to cricket, 5 sports could debut — or return — at the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles

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The inaugural girls flag football championships for Massachusetts high schoolers took place at Gillette Stadium in June. Could the Olympic stage be next? Kylie Cooper for The Boston Globe

Flag football hit its biggest stage in Las Vegas last year, when the format was a major part of the new-look Pro Bowl with NFL stars taking part.

But the Olympics? That’s a different level.

As the International Olympic Committee prepares to finalize the Olympic program for the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles, five new sports have been proposed ahead of meetings in Mumbai, India, starting later this week: baseball and softball, which have each come and gone from the program over the years; cricket and lacrosse, once briefly included; and squash and flag football, potential newcomers to the Olympic stage.

Here’s what to know.

Flag football

Flag football is perhaps the most intriguing inclusion, as what most perceive as a backyard game could find itself with a seat at the Olympus table.

“Flag football has been a very quickly-emerging sport,” said Charles Davis, president and co-founder of USA Flag. “It’s kind of been one of those things that’s always been a pipe dream with all the stipulations that the Olympics has on team sports. You’ve seen sports like rugby had to convert to rugby sevens, and normal football just has too many players on the team, so flag football was the most likely [format] just because of its infrastructure. The NFL has been pushing it really hard, so it’s a cool blessing to see the sport go from its infancy, its roots, on military bases for fun to where it is now.”

Football in any form has only appeared twice at the Olympics, both as part of the demonstration program, in 1904 and 1932. The NFL has long had an eye on getting football back on the schedule and has helped promote flag football significantly in recent years. That culminated in the inclusion of flag football at the Pro Bowl, with Peyton and Eli Manning coaching from opposing sidelines and NFL stars like Tyreek Hill, Davante Adams, and Trevon Diggs taking part.

“It was really cool to see the NFL adopt flag football for the Pro Bowl and its skill games” Davis said. “Obviously our community in the flag space got a big kick of seeing these top-tier athletes playing the sport they play every weekend, that was so cool to see.”

Lacrosse

Another North American-centric sport on the docket for inclusion is lacrosse, which last appeared as a demonstration sport in 1948 and as a full-fledged competitive one in 1908. It has struggled to get on the program because of its lack of international participation, but could be back for the first Summer Games held in the United States since 1996. But how will the IOC handle the participation of First Nations bands and Native American tribes?

Lacrosse his its roots in Native American tradition, and World Lacrosse is the only international governing body to recognize those groups as sovereign nations. For example, the Haudenosaunee Nationals — previously known as the Iroquois Nationals — are three-time bronze medalists at the World Lacrosse Championship, with the men’s team ranked third by World Lacrosse behind the United States and Canada.

Longtime Boston Cannons star Paul Rabil, who later founded the Premier Lacrosse League, called the Haudenosaunee Nationals the “creators of the game,” and their status as an unrecognized Native American nation would be a major talking point if lacrosse makes the cut for 2028.

Baseball and softball

Baseball and softball making the shortlist is no surprise, as each has been revived and dropped multiple times over the last few decades and will very likely make a return for the 2028 Games.

Baseball and softball both returned for the 2020 Games after missing out in 2012 and 2016, and again being dropped for 2024. The results in Tokyo were identical: 2-0 wins for host Japan over the United States in both the baseball and softball gold-medal matches.

Cricket

Cricket is a sport with very little presence in the United States, but has massive popularity in other parts of the world, particularly in commonwealth nations like the United Kingdom, Australia, India, and Pakistan. A form of cricket called Twenty20 — matches lasting around 2 ½ hours like other team sports, rather than the grueling Test format that can take up to five days — is on the shortlist for inclusion in 2028, which would be its first appearance in 128 years.

Despite being perhaps the second-most popular sport in the world behind soccer, cricket has been absent from the Olympics since its lone inclusion in 1900. There have been plenty of movements toward reintroduction, largely curtailed by internal division within the International Cricket Council, the sport’s governing body, and its most powerful national body, the Board of Control for Cricket in India.

But 2028 will likely see its return, as the sport tries to gain a foothold in a country with almost no widespread interest despite cricket’s immense global popularity.

Squash

Joining tennis, badminton, and table tennis, squash is set to become the fourth racket sport at the Olympics in making its debut in 2028. The World Squash Federation is a recognized governing body by the IOC, but the sport has never made the cut for the Olympics despite regular inclusion at multi-sport events like the Commonwealth Games and Asian Games.