How girls’ flag football kicked off in South Jersey and ‘opened so many doors’ for those involved

Barb Hertline didn’t have any coaching experience in flag football prior to 2025.

Jim McHugh, the Camden Catholic High School athletic director, told her there was a grant available to start a girls’ flag football program at the school and asked Hertline if she would be willing to be the first head coach of the program.

“Without a doubt, I said yes because it was an opportunity for our girls,” said Hertline, the executive assistant & special projects manager at Camden Catholic. “I didn’t know anything about flag football or the rules or really anything that it would entail. I just knew I wanted to be a part of it to give these girls a chance to experience it.”

The decision gave Camden Catholic’s girls an opportunity to play the sport that was quickly gaining popularity in South Jersey.

“They wanted this opportunity and we were able to give that to them, and it has opened so many doors,” Hertline said.

» READ MORE: NJSIAA approves girls’ flag football as a state-sanctioned sport

In May, the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association sanctioned girls’ flag football as a high school varsity sport with the first official season starting in the spring of 2027.

The sport initially began as a club team at several South Jersey high schools in 2023. June Cioffi, director of athletics at Kingsway and president of the West Jersey Football League, said the first two years served as a “pilot stage” for coaches, athletic directors, and league officials.

“It was an easy sell, and everyone was on board,” Cioffi said.

The Eagles and New York Giants played a significant role in helping girls’ flag become sanctioned in New Jersey.

The Eagles launched a girls’ flag football league in 2022 with the intention of reducing barriers of entry. The league began with 16 teams, but has now expanded to 100 teams from Pennsylvania and 30 from South Jersey.

“They were very helpful in offering all of that for those first couple years and to try to bring on new schools and make it more of an easy sell to the superintendents,” Cioffi said.

The Eagles offered each team funds to get programs started and provided uniforms, footballs, coaching seminars and equipment. Clinics were also hosted for players and coaches, and the Eagles partnered with Operation Warm, a non-profit organization that manufactures sports bras to provide gear for girls in sports. According to their website, by the age of 14, girls are dropping out of sports at two times the rate of boys because of a lack of access to basic gear.

“A barrier to participation was the lack of equipment and so working with Operation Warm, we can now give sports bras to every participant,” said Don Smolenski, president of the Eagles.

» READ MORE: Eagles’ fifth annual girls’ flag football championship highlights local growth

The Eagles support was intended to represent who they are as an organization.

“We’ve opened up our facilities; fields and indoor practice facilities,” Smolenski said. “That’s us sort of embracing the community around us, and you see the impact when you see how excited the athletes are when they come to a practice or run onto the field for the very first time — it’s incredibly gratifying and motivates us to continue to explore how we can further support it.”

The Eagles hosted more than 100 girls’ flag football coaches and players from the tri-state area at training camp on Aug. 24. It was an experience, some coaches and players say, they never thought they would have.

“It’s really nice to know that a male-dominated sport is very supportive of women coming in and just kind of making it their own,” said Jade Matthew, a senior at Kingsway Regional High School. “I feel like all the opportunities that we get, even something like this, and the fact that they host our championship and playoff games, it’s just nice to be a part of.”

Mattew and teammate Jayda Romagnoli grew up playing co-ed flag football with their siblings.

“It was a bit hard competing with boys even. ... when I was little, normally the boy would never really pass to us, and we kind of always got ignored,” Matthew said. “But it’s nice to see that we’re kind of growing out of our little shy phase and actually embracing that this is ours and we can make it what we want.”

When they first heard girls’ flag was going to be a high school varsity sport, they thought it was going to be co-ed.

» READ MORE: Women’s flag football on track to gain NCAA championship status before making its Olympic debut

“They’re really taking this serious and they were actually growing it,” Romagnoli said. “I want to go to college for it, so it’s nice to hear that more people are going to start getting the love for this sport that I had before.”

Interest in flag football has “exploded”, Cioffi said, with more college programs including flag as a varsity sport at all levels.

Several South Jersey high school coaches said the Eagles’ backing their teams helped speed up the process to sanction the sport.

“We want the sport of football to be embraced by everyone — men, women, boys, girls,” Smolenski said. “We don’t want it to just be thought of as, ‘Oh, that’s a boy sport, only boys can play,’ and flag football is a sport that can be played by everyone.”

Last year, Hertline knew very little about flag football during her first season as coach at Camden Catholic, but the growth of the game is a testament to the increased opportunities and the determination of the girls.

“Girls get such a bad reputation sometimes, with the ‘play like a girl,’” Hertline said. “Yeah, play like a girl because if you see the way our girls play, they are second to none against any boys’ team. They really raise the bar and because there has been so much excitement surrounding the announcement of all of this and the NFL is backing it, everyone wants to be a part of this.”