Atlantic East Conference announces plans to offer NCAA Division III varsity women’s flag football in 2025

In a partnership with the NFL and RCX Sports, the conference will become the first to offer varsity flag football at five institutions.

The Archbishop Ryan High School team huddles up before a scrimmage at Lincoln Financial Field on March 5, 2022.Read moreHEATHER KHALIFA / Staff Photographer

by Isabella DiAmore

Published June 5, 2023, 10:00 a.m. ET

About a year ago, Atlantic East Conference commissioner Jessica Huntley read an article about girls competing in high school flag football. She thought: If girls have opportunities to play in high school, why couldn’t they do the same in college?

She decided to make it happen. In a partnership with the NFL and RCX Sports, along with support from the Eagles, Huntley announced Monday her conference’s plans to offer varsity women’s flag football — the first to do so — with an anticipated starting date of spring 2025. The Atlantic East Conference competes at NCAA’s Division III level.

“Establishing women’s flag football has been a great honor for us, and I am so excited to provide this opportunity for female athletes around the country,” Huntley said in a statement. “The ever-growing high school ranks make this a valuable step for our schools and the commitment to future growth with our athletic programs and women’s sports.”

Cabrini, Gwynedd Mercy, Immaculata, Marywood, Neumann, Centenary University, and Marymount University make up the Atlantic East Conference. Five of the seven institutions — Centenary, Cabrini, Immaculata, Marymount, and Neumann — will take part in the first season.

Before beginning varsity play, the schools plan to offer club flag football with weekend tournaments in 2024.

Neumann athletic director Chuck Sack said he saw this plan as a smooth transition with minimal resources needed to operate, with most universities currently offering coed intramural flag football. He’s aware of how the sport is growing across the nation, particularly in Pennsylvania.

“When the idea of flag football came up, it was, ‘OK, is there a demand? Is there something out there?’ Yes, you can see it locally,” Sack said. “That was really the No. 1 motivator to me — we have high school students right now who are enjoying this sport. It’s a sport that I think women have wanted to play and are invested in on different levels, not just flag football.”

During the early stages of the process, Huntley, along with the athletic directors from the five participating schools, sat down with Jimmy Lynch, the executive director of athletics for the Philadelphia School District and president of the Public League, to see how feasible it was to operate at the college level.

Over the last two years, Lynch has worked toward the expansion of high school flag football. Through a partnership with the Eagles in 2022, the Girls Flag Football League was launched. What started as 16 teams now includes 38 from Pennsylvania and 14 from South Jersey.

“We’ve seen a rapid growth in the game across our city,” Lynch said in a statement. “Our hope is to have girls’ flag football become a sanctioned sport in our state in the coming years and to continue expanding on these opportunities for our female student-athletes.”

Seven states — California, Georgia, Florida, Nevada, New York, Alabama, and Alaska — have sanctioned girls’ flag football and conduct high school state championships.

This year will mark a trial run for the Atlantic East Conference as it spreads awareness and assesses the interest level while sorting through the logistics of scheduling games and finding coaches and officials.

Immaculata athletic director Paul Murphy believes it will be a chance to be at the forefront of the game before flag football takes off at the collegiate level, but more importantly, it will open doors for female athletes to play the sport on a bigger stage.

“I anticipate this being an NCAA varsity sport in the not-so-distant future,” Murphy said. “It’ll become just like all the rest of the sports out there. There’ll be national championships. ... It’s going to take off pretty well. It’s going to be so big across the country, that it’s going to take everybody by storm.”