Bills name three high school girls flag football coaches of the year

Chris Edwards, Mike Wilkinson and Ryan Aldrich were named the Bills’ 2026 high school girls flag football coaches of the year. Edwards, who coaches Pioneer High School in Section VI, took the Buffalo region honor; Wilkinson of Hornell High School won in Section V; and Aldrich earned the Syracuse region nod in Section III.

The award is the final step in a seven-week Coach of the Week program that gave each weekly honoree a $1,000 grant for his program and put each regional winner in line for an additional $1,000 at season’s end. The Bills also brought the 2026 coaches to a minicamp practice earlier this spring.

Edwards’ selection carried the clearest numbers behind it. He has coached Pioneer girls flag football since the program started three years ago, and the team went 41-3 in that span. Pioneer won two division titles, two Section VI championships and the 2025 NYSPHSAA state title, edging Owego Free Academy 13-12 in overtime to become the first Section VI school to win a girls flag football state championship.

Edwards also serves as Pioneer’s athletic director, coached the boys varsity football team as a defensive coordinator for 18 years and spent decades coaching varsity wrestling and tennis.

Girls flag football launched in Western New York in spring 2022, became a state-sanctioned sport in 2023 and entered its third NYSPHSAA state championship season in 2026. The Bills counted 255 public schools across New York as participating this year, including 91 in Western New York across Sections VI, V and III. The team’s 2026 High School Girls Flag Football Kickoff drew a record 70 confirmed teams and about 1,750 athletes, up from 20 Western New York teams in 2022.

In 2025, the Bills surprised then-coaches of the year Mark Layer and Ian Insley on a video call and invited the Webster Schroeder and Pioneer teams to a minicamp practice after their state championships. This year, Edwards, Wilkinson and Aldrich appeared in a Bills-produced video alongside Dion Dawkins, Dawson Knox, Khalil Shakir and Dalton Kincaid.