Indiana Preps | The State / Girls Flag Football

WESTFIELD, Ind. — Sunday afternoon at Grand Park, in the final hours of the world’s largest youth flag football tournament, the Indianapolis Colts walked up to a microphone and made an announcement that three years of work, a million dollars, and thousands of young women had been building toward.

The Road to 100 is complete.

108 Indiana high schools have now committed to fielding girls flag football teams in the 2026-27 school year — representing more than 50 cities and towns across the state. That number clears the threshold required for the IHSAA to vote on full sanctioning of the sport, which could happen as early as May 2027.

Indiana Preps was there when the announcement was made. We were there because we were already there — as the exclusive media rights holder and producer of the inaugural IFFCA All-Star Game, which kicked off just minutes after the Road to 100 was declared complete on the same Grand Park campus. The first snap of Indiana’s first-ever girls flag football all-star game was thrown on the same afternoon that the sport crossed the threshold toward full IHSAA sanctioning. That’s not a coincidence. That’s what building a sport the right way looks like.

Lacey Nix / Indiana Preps

How We Got Here

The numbers tell the story with more clarity than any analysis can.

In 2023, the Colts launched the Girls High School Flag Football League with eight teams. It grew to 27 in 2024. It reached 78 in 2025 — the season that earned the sport its first IHSAA designation as an emerging sport. And now, heading into the fall of 2026, 108 teams are committed across the state of Indiana.

Eight to 108 in three years. That’s not organic growth. That’s what intentional investment produces.

The Colts invested up to $10,000 per school to help offset startup costs — typically ranging from $5,000 to $8,000 for equipment, uniforms, training, and coaching stipends — as part of a $1 million commitment from the Irsay family to fund the Road to 100 campaign. Startup funds are still available for schools joining in 2026.

The mechanism behind the growth is important because it answers the question most people ask when they see a sport expand this fast: is it real? A sport that grew because someone handed out checks and hoped for participation would look fragile. What Indiana built is different. The teams that joined did so with coaching stipends, equipment, and a support structure that gave each program a legitimate foundation to build from. Programs that are built right tend to stay.

What Sanctioning Actually Means

Full IHSAA sanctioning is not a ceremonial designation. It is a structural transformation — and the difference between what Indiana girls flag football is right now and what it becomes after a sanctioning vote is significant.

Sanctioning means a state tournament. An official bracket. A trophy. A champion. The same framework that gives Indiana basketball, volleyball, football, and every other sanctioned sport its infrastructure for competition, recognition, and legacy. Right now, girls flag football in Indiana has none of that. The players who compete this fall do so without a postseason to chase, without official state recognition, and without the recruiting visibility that comes from a sport with a championship attached to it.

That changes when the IHSAA votes. The vote could come as early as May 2027. When it does, every girl currently playing flag football in Indiana gains something she didn’t have before — a state champion to aspire to, scholarship pathways that attach to sanctioned sport status, and the institutional legitimacy that tells college coaches, communities, and families that this sport belongs in the same conversation as everything else Indiana does.

Forty states currently have high school girls flag football programs. Roughly half of them are sanctioned. Indiana is about to join that second half.

The People Who Built It

None of this happened accidentally, and the people behind it said as much on Sunday.

“Girls flag football provides another pathway for girls to learn, play and love our great sport, as well as all the other opportunities and benefits that come from playing youth sports and being a part of a team,” said Colts Owner and Chief Brand Officer Kalen Jackson. “The Colts are proud to help lead this effort to make football more accessible and inclusive for all, and this is only the beginning for girls flag in Indiana.”

Jackson also acknowledged the late Jim Irsay’s vision behind the investment — a reminder that the $1 million the Irsay family put into the Road to 100 was a deliberate act of building something permanent, not a marketing exercise. “This is not a flash in the pan moment,” she said. “We built it this way and we built it right.”

IHSAA Commissioner Paul Neidig added: “Reaching more than 100 participating schools is a tremendous milestone for girls flag football in Indiana and it reflects the growing enthusiasm for the sport across our state. We appreciate the Colts for their vision, leadership, and investment in creating new opportunities for young women. This achievement marks an important step in the IHSAA’s process toward potential championship recognition.”

And then there was Breanna Hampton — who caught the first touchdown pass in Indiana’s inaugural IFFCA All-Star Game just minutes after the announcement was made on the same campus. “It means all our hard work and our dedication and us showing up every day really mattered,” Hampton said. “And you can see that in how they expanded it.”

That quote deserves to be read twice. A player who caught a touchdown in the first all-star game in the sport’s Indiana history, on the day the sport crossed the threshold toward full sanctioning, explaining what it means. That is the full circle this day completed.

Indiana Preps Was Here From the Beginning

This is not a sport Indiana Preps discovered on Sunday. We have been covering it since before most of the state’s media understood what it was.

The First Flag series. The College Day Camp at Lawrence North. The 7-on-7 tournament at Indiana Wesleyan. The player profiles. The All-Star Weekend at Grand Park — which Indiana Preps produced as the exclusive media rights holder in partnership with the Colts and the IFFCA. Every piece of coverage, every athlete story, every event was built on the same belief the Colts brought to their Road to 100: this sport deserves to be treated like every other sport in Indiana.

One hundred and eight schools agree. The IHSAA is next.

The state champion in girls flag football doesn’t exist yet. Indiana Preps will be there when she does.

SUBSCRIBE: Indiana Preps covers high school athletics, recruiting, and athlete development across the state of Indiana. Indiana Preps served as the exclusive media rights holder and producer of the inaugural IFFCA All-Star Game at Grand Park on July 26, 2026, in partnership with the Indianapolis Colts and the Indiana Flag Football Coaches Association.