Elizabethtown College names Michael Osayi first women's flag football coach

Elizabethtown College named Michael Osayi its first head women’s flag football coach on July 8, handing him the job of building a program that does not yet have a roster, a league home or a game schedule. The Blue Jays plan to launch women’s flag football in spring 2028 as the school’s 25th varsity sport, and the hire is the clearest sign yet that Etown is moving from announcement mode into construction mode.

This is not a plug-and-play opening. Elizabethtown said women’s flag football is its first athletics addition since men’s volleyball in the 2018-19 academic year, and the college is still exploring conference affiliations. That means Osayi’s first work will center on recruiting channels, roster construction and competitive fit, not game-planning for a scoreboard that does not exist yet. The school is also directing interested student-athletes to complete a recruiting questionnaire, the kind of early pipeline move that matters when a program is trying to identify who will become its first class of foundational players.

Osayi arrives with direct flag football experience that fits a startup job. He spent the past four years as head flag football coach at JO Combs Middle School in San Tan Valley, Arizona, where he worked with younger athletes and helped develop players from the ground up. That background matters in women’s college flag football, where programs often need coaches who can teach the sport, install structure and create identity before the first official snap.

Athletics director Chris Morgan framed the hire as a historic moment for the department and for the college’s commitment to giving women chances to compete, lead and grow through intercollegiate athletics. The timing also lines up with the sport’s rapid rise nationally. The NCAA Committee on Access, Opportunity and Impact recommended in May 2026 that Divisions I, II and III sponsor legislation for a National Collegiate Flag Football Championship, and if the divisions approve it in January, the first NCAA championship could be held in spring 2028. The NCAA added flag football to its Emerging Sports for Women program at the 2026 convention, another step toward that goal.

The feeder system is already swelling. The National Federation of State High School Associations said 42,955 girls played high school flag football in 2023-24, up from 20,875 the year before, and 19 states were either sanctioning the sport or running pilot programs as of early 2025. USA Football says flag football will also debut at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games, giving Etown a sport with college momentum, a growing pipeline and a hard deadline for getting its first team built right.