Lancaster County girls flag football camp nearly doubles in year two

A girls flag football camp in Lancaster County nearly doubled its turnout in year two, and the jump came with more than just extra bodies. The Rising Stars Football Academy Girls Flag Football Camp closed its five-day run at Millersville University with players, coaches and families treating it like a real offseason checkpoint for a sport that is starting to build its own pipeline.

The 2026 camp ran June 24-28 at Millersville and was billed by Rising Stars as its second annual girls flag football camp. The academy says it remains the only residential girls flag football camp in the country, and the only one built around a full collegiate student-athlete experience. That meant more than on-field work: Rising Stars said its schedule included practices, workouts and student-athlete development, the same language college programs use when they are trying to turn raw talent into ready-made prospects.

That framing mattered because the camp drew athletes from well beyond Pennsylvania. A volunteer coach came from Hawaii with 15 players, and a freshman from Canada was among the campers describing the sport as something that is moving into a wider national and international conversation. Rising Stars executive director Ron Johnson, a former NFL player, has built the camp around giving girls an experience he says they deserve, and the structure reflects that goal. The point is not just to run drills and send players home. It is to teach them how to live like student-athletes, with the habits, expectations and accountability that come with that label.

The timing is not accidental. Girls flag football is moving from an emerging school activity to a sanctioned sport in Pennsylvania, where the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association said it would officially sanction the game beginning with the 2025-26 school year. The PIAA said 148 schools were competing in girls flag football during the 2024-25 and 2025-26 school years, a number that shows the game is no longer confined to a small cluster of programs.

The college lane is widening too. A recent scholarship guide says the NAIA pioneered varsity women’s flag football in 2021, with NJCAA and NCAA schools beginning to offer programs and financial packages starting in 2025-26. Another overview says the NAIA will elevate women’s flag football to championship status beginning in 2026-27, while the 3C2A added it as an emerging sport the same academic year. Rising Stars’ camp materials also say the NFL backs the RCX Sports Foundation’s Women’s Flag Football International Scholarship Program.

For Lancaster County, the bigger number is not just participation. It is the size of the runway. The camp’s growth showed that girls flag football is already moving beyond the school season and into a year-round development model built for athletes who are starting to see college as the next stop, not the finish line.