CC Alley named Ohio girls flag football Player of the Year

CC Alley wasn’t just the best stat line in Ohio girls flag football. She was the clearest sign the sport has moved into a deeper, more specialized phase, one where an all-purpose weapon can still tilt the whole season. The Madison standout finished with 56 catches for 838 yards and 28 touchdowns, then added 236 passing yards and 124 rushing yards for 1,192 yards of offense and 28 total scores.

That kind of production is why Alley was named Player of the Year in The News-Herald’s 2026 girls flag football all-star selection package, but the bigger story is what the honors say about the state of the game. This is no longer a one-star, one-school league. The all-star list reads like a snapshot of a market expanding in real time, with elite receivers, quarterbacks and defensive playmakers carving out real roles and getting recognized for them.

DeWeese was another clear example. Berkshire’s standout earned mention for helping push the Bears into the state final four, and that run mattered because it came inside a bracket that left very little room for error. Berkshire’s postseason path included a 12-3 win and one loss in the regional finals, proof that the margin between surviving and going home was already razor-thin.

That competitive level also showed up in the first sanctioned state tournament. The Ohio High School Athletic Association announced on July 17, 2025, that girls flag football would get a state championship beginning in spring 2026, and eight schools eventually met at Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium in Canton for the inaugural event on May 16, 2026. Nordonia won the first title in state history, edging Cincinnati Mount Notre Dame 20-19 on a late touchdown with 1:27 left.

The bracket gave Berkshire and Madison hard evidence of how crowded the top tier had become. Berkshire reached the semifinals before falling to Nordonia 38-20, while Madison dropped a quarterfinal game to Cincinnati Mount Notre Dame 26-20. Those results made the all-star honors look less like a finish line and more like a standings report for the sport’s next layer.

Even the rules were still moving. On February 18, 2026, the OHSAA approved a revision allowing the scoring team to retain possession when trailing, a small change that underlined how new the structure still was. Put together, Alley’s numbers, Berkshire’s playoff run and Nordonia’s title all point to the same thing: Ohio girls flag football is building depth, finding parity and creating the kind of pipeline that can keep expanding well beyond one breakthrough season.