Carly Kray wins first Ashtabula County girls flag football honor

Carly Kray’s 71 receptions, 860 receiving yards and 24 touchdowns powered Edgewood through an 8-2 season and made her the first Ashtabula County Girls Flag Football Player of the Year. The Edgewood senior also added 14 interceptions, a total that ranked third in Ohio among teams that reported stats, giving her rare two-way production in a sport still finding its footing in Northeast Ohio.

MaxPreps listed Kray’s 2025-26 flag football line at 71 catches, 860 yards, 24 receiving touchdowns and 10 games played, with the profile last updated May 13, 2026. Those numbers matched the scope of her season for the Warriors, who used her as their most dangerous target and one of their sharpest defenders as they pushed toward another strong finish.

The honor mattered beyond the numbers because Ashtabula County coaches had never before given out a girls flag football player-of-the-year award. Edgewood is only in its second season of girls flag football, yet the program has already produced a county first and a player who helped define how quickly the sport can move from novelty to standard-bearing talent.

Kray’s rise also tracks the way the game has spread locally. Her connection to football started in the backyard, where she had to fight to join games with her older brother and his friends, and that early competitive edge now shows up in a varsity program that is already pressing into higher-level territory. Edgewood was one of only three area schools fielding a team in 2025, alongside Conneaut and Madison, and the Warriors advanced to the Northeast Ohio Girls High School Flag Football Championship Tournament before also playing in the state tournament.

The Warriors did not match the previous year’s state-tournament run, but they still finished 8-2 while practicing only about once a week because so many players were tied up in other spring sports. Coach Olajuwon Cooper said Kray’s production stood out, but her impact extended beyond catches and interceptions because defenses had to account for her on every snap, creating openings for teammates around her.

Kray’s award landed in the middle of a broader surge for the sport. The Ohio High School Athletic Association elevated girls flag football to a fully recognized sport for the 2026-27 school year on June 24, 2026, making it the association’s 29th recognized sport. OHSAA said Ohio had 162 girls flag football teams in spring 2026, up from 20 schools three years earlier, with the growth beginning in Northeast Ohio in 2021. The state’s first official tournament was held May 16 at Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium in Canton, where Macedonia Nordonia beat Cincinnati Mount Notre Dame 20-19, and the sport is also set for the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.