Former basketball star Laneah Bryan emerges as Team USA flag standout

Laneah Bryan finished as Team USA’s interception leader with seven picks as the U.S. women beat Mexico 31-18 for the 2024 IFAF world title in Lahti, Finland. Now entering her fourth season with the program, the former New Mexico guard has built her career in flag football.

Bryan’s path did not start on a football field. She came up through New Mexico and Texas, won a state championship at Volcano Vista High School, finished high school in El Paso and then played 121 games for the University of New Mexico from 2014 through 2018. After college, she moved back to El Paso, started entering flag football tournaments and was eventually scouted by Team USA. She attended trials in 2023 and made the roster.

Bryan credits lateral movement, hand-eye coordination and the ability to process space as traits that carry over cleanly. In flag football, those skills help a defender stay attached in space, break on a route and finish a play before an offense can turn the edge. USA Football’s roster includes multiple former basketball players and other athletes from states where girls flag football has been established for years.

Bryan finished the tournament with 18 flag pulls, 16 passes defended and seven interceptions, including one in the gold-medal game. The U.S. women entered that event as the top-ranked team in IFAF’s world rankings, then went 6-0 and handled Mexico in the final to protect that status.

USA Football has finalized the U.S. men’s and women’s rosters for the 2026 IFAF World Championship cycle, with the women chosen from a 120-athlete evaluation pool. The World Flag Championship in Düsseldorf runs August 13-16, 2026, with teams from 19 nations across five continents, and it doubles as a direct Olympic qualifier for LA28, with the top two teams in each gender earning berths.