Submitted photo West Branch’s McKenna Woost carries the ball, while Warren G. Harding’s Storm Jordan, right, pursues during a game on April 12.

Having played football for most of his life, Elliott Giles wanted to stay close to the game after a decorated football career at Youngstown State in the late 1990s.

So, in 2007, Giles founded the Youngstown Youth Flag Football Association. A few years prior, it started off as an adult flag football league, but eventually, Giles stopped the adult league and began to focus solely on the youth league.

“I’m a teacher by trade, so I’m always thinking about how I can impact youth in anything that I do,” Giles said. “I figured that I knew youth was going to grow at an astronomical rate, so that’s when I stopped doing adult and then concentrated on youth. So I have been doing youth flag football for almost 20 years now, and we just finished our 19th year this year.”

Giles’ prediction came to fruition and since then, girls flag football has grown exponentially, and it continues to be one of the fastest growing sports in the country at the youth, high school and collegiate levels.

In 2023, about 500,000 girls ages 6-17 played flag football, which was a 63% increase since 2019, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations.

Also, according to USA Football data, the number of girls ages 6-12 playing flag football has increased by 283% from 2015-24.

“Honestly, I just think it’s the accessibility and popularity of the sport, and how it doesn’t emphasize or concentrate on the tackle or physical part of football, but more so the agility, the speed, the quickness and elusiveness of football,” Giles said. “I think that’s what appeals not only to parents, but obviously girls as well.”

Giles has seen similar growth at the local level with youth flag football participation. For many years, YYFFA averaged about 60 teams per season. But this past spring, the YYFFA had more than 80 teams across various age groups ranging from age 3-4 all the way to age 13-14.

In the early days, Giles had youth flag football leagues in Youngstown and Campbell. But now, the organization has expanded to include a league in Geauga County and a league in Stark County.

“We have been very fortunate as an organization to be able to capitalize on that growth to the point where we have four leagues all over northeast Ohio,” Giles said. “When I coached for two years for the USA junior national teams, and when we won the gold medal, I had girls on my team that had high school flag football already sanctioned in their state. But I knew when Ohio sanctioned it that it was going to continue to help the league grow, and that is what I contribute a lot to why the growth of flag football has grown in our organization.”

Over the years, YYFFA teams have seen plenty of success at both the regional and national levels. Just last week, three local youth teams won the Cleveland Browns’ NFL Flag Regional championship and will head to compete at the national competition in July.

“It just means there’s a lot of talent with these girls from our organization,” Giles said. “We’re just excited to get these girls another opportunity to play together, but now at a national level against some of the best talent in the country.”

VALLEY EXPANSION

As participation in flag football has grown at the youth level, that growth has begun to trickle up to the high school level, as well.

In spring of 2025, Warren G. Harding was the only Mahoning Valley school to field a girls flag football program. Harding had roughly 35 girls sign up during the program’s first year, and that number grew to 50 this spring.

After strong regular seasons, the Raiders made it to the northeast Ohio regional tournament each of the last two years.

“It really gives girls a home, gives them a different avenue other than obvious sports like softball, basketball and soccer, and gives them a different avenue to express themselves,” Harding head coach Justin Blair said. “Then girls who don’t play sports, I feel like [flag football] is giving them the home to say, ‘Hey, I can do this.’ It’s giving them that home and opportunity to showcase the talent that they have.”

This year, more local schools have followed suit, as nine local schools added the sport, with West Branch, Newton Falls, Pymatuning Valley, Champion, Liberty, Howland, East, Campbell and Mineral Ridge adding teams.

In 2021, there were only six schools with girls flag football in northeast Ohio. This past year, that grew to 121 schools, according to the Cleveland Browns’ Girls Flag Football program.

“I would hope that bigger schools around here, like Fitch, Boardman, Ursuline, Mooney, those big schools that have a footprint in the Mahoning Valley, would add [flag football],” Blair said. “That would just make it that much more great. All these schools are doing it, why not them? So I hope that more teams would join and they would see the success of the local teams that are doing it, and that would add more and more to the area.”

In its first year as a program, West Branch burst onto the scene under head coach Rick Mulinix. The Warriors went 10-0 during the regular season, winning a first-round game against St. Clairsville after making the northeast regional tournament, before falling in the quarterfinals to Midview.

“If I have to be honest, I had so much fun, more fun than I thought I was going to have. I missed baseball 0%,” said Mulinix, West Branch’s former baseball coach. “After we got beat, I was actually depressed because of how much I enjoyed coaching it.”

This year also marked the first OHSAA girls flag football state championship. Nordonia won the inaugural title after four teams from the northeast region and four teams from the southwest region each advanced to the state tournament at Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium.

The OHSAA officially approved girls flag football as a varsity championship sport in July, making Ohio the 17th state to officially sanction girls flag football. A total of 160 schools fielded teams this spring.

“I would say, within five years, I believe almost every school in the state of Ohio will have [girls flag football]. That’s how fast it’s growing and how popular it is,” Mulinix said. “When you see so many schools in the area, it’s going to be hard not to add it when they see us having the success we have, and then they’ll have pressure on them because … like a Salem, they’re going to be like, ‘Hey, they have it, look how much fun they have, how much interest there is. Why don’t we have it now?'”

OPPORTUNITIES FOR COLLEGE

Increased opportunities at the college level has also helped foster the growth of girls flag football at the high school and youth level.

More and more colleges and universities are adding girls flag football to their athletic departments and providing scholarship opportunities to play. More than 100 schools have planned to compete in flag football during the next academic year, according to the NCAA.

In February, Columbiana’s Megan Moser signed her letter-of-intent to play flag football at Division III school Illinois Wesleyan. Mulinix also said three of his players are also going to play flag football in college — Allie Brammer and Sammi Beatty at Baldwin Wallace and Alli Kanagy at Mount Union.

“[Flag football] has opened a lot of opportunities for girls to play at the next level,” Mulinix said. “We have three girls that are going to play college flag football, that if not given this opportunity, they wouldn’t be doing that right now. So if you coach and you’re in education, you do it for kids. So I think this is a good thing for the girls in high school right now. Like I said, it’s not going away. I can assure you of that.”

Plus, at the end of May, the NCAA Committee on Access, Opportunity and Impact voted to recommend that Divisions I, II and III add a flag football national championship as soon as Spring 2028, according to the Associated Press. That means a title game could occur before flag football makes its Olympic debut at the 2028 Games in Los Angeles.

“I think it brings more credibility to it,” Giles said. “In years past, some parents have actually told me that, ‘I don’t want my daughter doing flag football because there’s really no future in it. She wants to concentrate on basketball or softball because she has aspirations of going to college for it,’ which we understood. But now, they know and they see that there are opportunities for flag football for these girls to play at the next level.”

FLAG FOOTBALL’S FUTURE

Giles, Blair and Mulinix all concur that flag football’s future is bright as it continues to spread and grow.

Fall signups for the YYFFA are coming up soon, and those interested can reach out to Giles via email at yffayouth@gmail.com or by phone at 3307541070. Also, if someone is interested in starting a program at their school, they can reach out to the Cleveland Browns’ Flag Football program for more information, resources and direction on the steps required.

“I don’t see it slowing down,” Giles said. “I think that with the success of our 12U, 14U and high school girls teams, that’s only going to excite these younger girls even more to say, ‘You know what, I want to play on that team. I want to have an opportunity to play at a high level. So I think all of it just feeds off each other.

“These young girls see these older girls play. … And we’re hoping that this just drives the interest for the younger girls to want to play even more because they see what flag football can do for them, not just locally and regionally, but now nationally.”