Bears crown Kenwood at first Girls Flag Football Summer League Championship

Kenwood Academy won the Chicago Bears’ first Girls Flag Football Summer League Championship at Halas Hall on June 27, finishing at the top of a 45-team field drawn from eight conferences. St. Charles North High School placed second, while Antioch High School beat Harlem High School to take third, giving the bracket a finish that showed real depth beyond a single dominant program.

The Bears turned their headquarters into a championship setting and treated the event like more than a summer showcase. Super Bowl XX champion Jay Hilgenberg and former receiver Anthony Morgan were on hand to present trophies and championship rings, giving the title game the kind of recognition usually reserved for established varsity finales. For Kenwood, the win was more than a trophy haul, because the school now owns the first championship in the league’s history.

The scale of the field mattered as much as the winner. Forty-five teams spread across eight conferences is a sign that girls flag football in Illinois is no longer sitting in a narrow lane, but moving through multiple school systems and regional pipelines at once. Kenwood’s title came from Chicago, but the presence of St. Charles North, Antioch and Harlem showed that suburban and city programs were close enough to the top tier to make the championship feel competitive from start to finish.

That reach did not happen overnight. The Bears helped launch girls flag football in Illinois in 2021, when the first season began with 22 Chicago Public League teams. By late 2024, the club said the sport had grown from those 22 schools to an anticipated 200-plus teams in 2025, and the Halas Hall championship now looks like the kind of endpoint that growth was building toward.

Bears manager of youth and high school football Gustavo Silva said, “It's incredibly gratifying to be able to host a tournament here for something we've played such a big part in as an organization.” He has also said the club is committed to supporting girls flag football, and in 2024 described the All-State honorees as the top 1% of athletes in Illinois. Kevin Warren, who became Bears president and CEO in 2023, has called girls flag football “the future of the game.”

The franchise has backed that message with repeated events at Halas Hall, including state championships in 2023, an All-State dinner in 2024 honoring the top 56 girls flag football student-athletes in Illinois, and a collegiate women’s flag football tournament in March 2026 featuring seven programs. The Bears also staged a Girls Flag Football Championships event in Loughborough, England, on June 19, extending the program well beyond Illinois and making Kenwood’s title part of a much larger organizational push.