Kenwood Academy wins first Girls Flag Football Summer League Championship

Kenwood Academy won the first Girls Flag Football Summer League Championship at Halas Hall, finishing atop a 45-team field that stretched across eight Illinois conferences. St. Charles North High School took second, while Antioch High School beat Harlem High School to claim third, giving the bracket a clean podium instead of the feel-good ambiguity that usually comes with early-stage events.

The Bears hosted the championship on June 27 at Halas Hall, a setting that matters as much as the trophy. Putting a girls flag football final on one of the region’s most recognizable football campuses gave the summer league a scale and visibility that schools, players and families can see immediately. This was not a clinic or a one-off showcase. It was a conference-based tournament with a winner from each conference, then a final stage that produced Kenwood’s title.

That structure is the point. The Bears say they have supported girls flag football in Illinois since 2021, with help from Nike, Gatorade and Visa, and that work helped push the sport toward IHSA sanctioning. The Illinois High School Association announced on Feb. 13, 2024, that girls flag football would debut as an IHSA sport in fall 2024, and the first state championships followed that fall. By the 2025-26 season, the IHSA said 216 schools had officially entered the girls flag football tournament season.

The numbers keep getting heavier. The Bears said more than 200 schools competed in the 2025 IHSA girls flag football state series, up from 154 schools in the inaugural IHSA season. At those championships, Maine South High School beat Whitney Young High School for first place and Willowbrook High School beat Perspectives for third. Whitney Young, under head coach Valerie Spann, completed its fourth season and had placed at state in back-to-back years, while Bears season coverage said the team played 20 games in 32 days. That is what a functioning pipeline looks like: repeat programs, meaningful postseason play and teams that know how to survive a long schedule.

The Bears have also built support beyond the scoreboard. Their Girls Flag Coach of the Week and Player of the Week programs each come with a $2,000 donation to a school’s football or flag football program, and the 2026 Monsters Flag Football program held 25 clinics for more than 2,600 students. Bears president and CEO Kevin Warren called girls flag football "the future of football" at the 2025 state championships, and football development director Gustavo Silva said the sport’s growth and development had been "a huge success" as speed, physicality and overall play rose year over year. Kenwood’s championship now sits inside that larger machine, one more sign that girls flag football in Illinois has moved well past novelty.