JSerra tops Orange County girls flag football preseason rankings

JSerra opened Orange County girls flag football at No. 1 in the preseason Top 10, a familiar perch after the Lions beat Lutheran/Orange 25-20 for the 2025 CIF Southern Section Division 1 title at Fred Kelly Stadium. With the county season beginning Saturday, Aug. 8, the ranking immediately framed the opening weeks as a test of whether anyone can catch the reigning standard.

The Lions did not reach the top on reputation alone. JSerra finished No. 1 in the final MaxPreps Top 25 girls flag football rankings based on 2025 results, then added more hardware when the CIF-SS all-section honors page released Dec. 8, 2025 named sophomore Ava Irwin Division 1 Player of the Year and Brian Ong Division 1 Coach of the Year. That combination gives JSerra the two ingredients that usually matter most in high school flag football: a proven quarterback-level playmaker on the roster and the coach who already guided a championship run.

JSerra’s edge also comes from the scale of the program around it. JSerra athletics fields 28 varsity teams and describes its approach as transformational and no-cut, a structure that helps keep depth and competition flowing across sports. In girls flag football, that matters because the best teams often separate not just with top-end talent, but with the ability to replace graduation losses without resetting the program.

Orange County’s rankings carry weight because the county has become one of California’s deepest flag football hotbeds, and the CIF-SS has built the sport into a formal championship pathway with divisions and playoffs in the 2025-26 season. That pathway is reinforced by year-round local programs such as MVP Orange, Females in Flag OC and South OC Flag Football, which keep talent moving into the high school ranks and widen the pool of teams capable of making a run.

The biggest challengers already have names and credentials. Huntington Beach and Newport Harbor were invited to a MaxPreps national tournament after establishing themselves as two of the top girls flag football teams in the country, and both programs have the pedigree to pressure JSerra if the Lions slip early. For now, though, the county starts where the rankings say it should, with JSerra at the top and everybody else chasing.