Michigan Cold Hearts builds girls flag football pipeline for college dreams

Coach Danny Hugan and Wayne Memorial coach Reggie Pearson Sr. built Michigan Cold Hearts in March to give Michigan players a place to develop skills, collect film and get in front of the kind of football network that can lead to college opportunities. The program is built as a college pathway, not a weekend pastime. It is designed for girls who want to keep playing football without taking the same physical punishment that comes with tackle football.

A program built to produce the next level

Cold Hearts is being shaped as the girls flag football version of Sound Mind Sound Body, the Detroit development program founded in 2004 to help football student-athletes earn college scholarships in Metro Detroit. The model is coaching, repetition, exposure and a clear route upward. Hugan is building a system that can prepare players for the standards college programs are starting to set.

Cold Hearts is preparing for its first tournament on July 25 in Waterford, then plans to host a 10-to-12 team jamboree at Wayne Memorial later in the summer. Those events create live reps, matchups and evaluation moments that a practice field cannot provide. For players like Brown and Lowe, the goal is to use those games to move closer to the next opportunity.

What players have to do to get noticed

The path from a Michigan summer team to a college roster is still being built. Cold Hearts gives girls a place to do that work, with a pipeline that teaches the game, tests it in competition and connects it to a broader football network.

• Coaching has to be specific. Hugan and Pearson are creating a program that teaches technique, decision-making and football language, not just participation.

• Tournament play has to be meaningful. The July 25 event in Waterford and the Wayne Memorial jamboree are built to create real game film and real evaluation.

• Exposure has to be organized. A player cannot build a college case without being seen against other teams, especially when the sport is still growing.

• The path has to connect to college programs that are actually adding the sport. That is where Michigan’s new ladder is starting to matter.

Michigan’s ladder is finally visible

Cold Hearts is entering a state ecosystem that has changed quickly. The Detroit Lions-backed Michigan Girls High School Flag Football League began in 2023 with four teams, then grew to 41 schools and more than 1,000 participants by 2025. The league’s first state championship was played at Ford Field on June 1, 2025, and the 2026 state championship tournament was held June 6-7, 2026, at Ford Field. The league is now in its fourth season, which gives the sport something it did not have only a few years ago: a recognizable high school structure inside Michigan.

For a team like Cold Hearts, a pipeline needs more than participation numbers. It needs a place where players can move from summer competition to school-season competition and then on to college recruitment. Ford Field hosting state championship play gives girls flag football in Michigan a visible championship stage.

College opportunities are opening faster than the sport did

The college side of the sport has also shifted. The NCAA added women’s flag football to its Emerging Sports for Women program on January 16, 2026, after approval from representatives across all three divisions at the 2026 NCAA Convention. That move gives the sport a more formal place inside the college athletics pipeline and increases the pressure on schools to build rosters, schedules and recruiting pathways.

Eastern Michigan University made the next step concrete on April 16, 2026, when it announced that women’s flag football will become a varsity sport in spring 2027. The program will be Eastern Michigan’s 21st varsity sport and 14th women’s varsity team, and the school’s move in Ypsilanti gives Michigan players a nearby example of where the sport can lead. The NAIA has already been there longer, with women’s flag football competition beginning in 2021 and the sport now operating as a championship sport in that association.

Players in Michigan no longer have to imagine a vague future in flag football; there are now championship structures, varsity announcements and a growing number of schools that can translate performance into a roster spot.

Why the Sound Mind Sound Body model fits

Sound Mind Sound Body was founded to create scholarship opportunities for football players, and it became a model because it paired development with a clear destination. Cold Hearts is trying to do the same thing for girls in flag football, in a state where the sport is still building its infrastructure.