13 Long Island programs attend Jets' third high school girls flag football media day at MetLife Stadium
East Meadow District assistant coach Will Hanley and player Isabella Torres attend the third annual high school girls flag football media day, hosted by the Jets at MetLife Stadium on Friday. Credit: Ed Murray
At the start of this decade, varsity flag football was an idea. When it was first certified as a championship sport by NYSPHSAA, the governing body of interscholastic athletics in New York State, in 2023, it was an unknown. By 2025, it became a growing trend. Now, in 2026, it is very much a part of the mainstream of varsity spring sports.
Over 100 varsity flag football programs from New York and New Jersey attended the third annual high school girls flag football media day hosted by the Jets at MetLife Stadium on Friday.
Each team was represented by two players and a coach. The teams were placed in groups of three or four and brought up on stage to be interviewed by SNY’s Jeane Coakley. The groups changed every 10 minutes until all teams were interviewed.
The players were also given individual photoshoots by the Jets’ staff, as well as a tour of the Jets’ locker room.
“Listening to the speaker before made me realize that although this is something I like to do in high school, it’s definitely something that’s growing,” Bellmore-Merrick junior wide receiver/pass rusher Katelyn Kuhl said. “It’s something I can do outside of high school. I can continue on if I want to, and this just makes it show how real this sport is.”
Long Island had 13 teams in attendance: Suffolk's Sachem East, Sachem North, Half Hollow Hills, West Babylon, Northport, Kings Park and Amityville and Nassau's East Meadow District, Valley Stream District, East Rockaway, Lynbrook, Locust Valley and Bellmore-Merrick.
The event coincided with Binghamton University announcing it will add women’s flag football to its existing slate of varsity teams. The program will join the Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) as an associate member and will begin competing in the 2028 season, with practices expected to begin as early as Spring 2027.
“I think it’s great; it’s yet another selling point for our sport,” Lynbrook coach David Yaker said. “When we’re going out there and trying to recruit girls to play, we can offer them an opportunity like playing at a school like Binghamton. It’s such an academically challenging institution that maybe this is an avenue for them to get in. Now there’s more opportunities for more girls.”
The girls also entered a competition designing custom Nike uniforms for their teams on stationary laptops in MetLife’s Coaches Club. Valley Stream District won the competition and will have its custom jerseys provided for free by Nike.
“It’s really exciting, especially since our jerseys are just black and white,” Valley Stream senior wideout/cornerback Gabriella Rivera said. “We don’t really get new jerseys often, so it’s really cool that they’re going to be Nike branded and coming straight from the Jets. I can say that me and my teammate won it for our team, which is so exciting.”
One of the most prominent Long Island programs in attendance was the combined Half Hollow Hills team. Hills is coming off a run to the state Class A championship, where it fell 20-6 to Scarsdale.
Hills got there in historic fashion, handing Plainview-Old Bethpage JFK its first-ever loss, 6-0, in the Long Island Class A Championship. The RedColts are looking to get back there this year and win the whole thing.
“Definitely our end goal is to be the state champions,” Hills senior linebacker Emma Wilck said. “Hopefully we’ll get there, but for now, we’ve just got to go stronger and better and not hold back. I think as a team, we’ve just got to stay strong together, have a lot of energy and just really want it.”
As the sport continues to grow, Kings Park hopes to do the same. Last year, it started 6-0 and finished 10-6 and lost in the Suffolk Class B quarterfinals to Eastport-South Manor.
Now in Class C, Kings Park hopes it will be able to finish stronger this year.
“This year, I think what we learned will pop and show off this year,” senior wideout Maddie Squillacioti said. “I think we were overconfident, but we learned from that. We’re really motivated to do the best we can this season and I think we will.”
Mike Anderson is a high school sports reporter who has covered 12 sports so far at Newsday. He was the sports editor of Stony Brook University's campus newspaper for two years.
