Winthrop adds women’s flag football club team for 2026-27

Winthrop added women’s flag football as a club sport for the 2026-27 academic year and named Reggie Cespedes as its inaugural head coach, a move that pushes the program into the college game before varsity sponsorship fully catches up. The school said Cespedes also serves as offensive coordinator for the Jamaican Women’s National Flag Football Team, while Joni Boyd, a Winthrop professor of exercise science and a former women’s professional football quarterback, will be a key consultant as the club takes shape.

The timing fits a broader race across the Southeast. Athletic director Chuck Rey said the Big South had made history by becoming the first conference to sponsor women’s flag football as both an NCAA sport and a club sport, and the league’s March 31 announcement laid out a path toward regional competitions, a conference invitational and its first varsity championship in spring 2028. Five league members, Charleston Southern, Gardner-Webb, Radford, UNC Asheville and USC Upstate, had already added the sport with NFL support.

Winthrop framed its move through Rock Hill’s Football City USA identity, tying the club to the area’s football culture while creating a new lane for women’s participation. The school’s setup also reflects how these programs are being built now: not as finished varsity products, but as staffed and organized club teams that can recruit athletes, establish schedules and prove demand before scholarships and full conference play arrive.

Sacramento State is following a similar path on the West Coast, but with a different regional rhythm. The Hornets said women’s flag football will be the school’s 22nd intercollegiate sport, beginning as a club team in 2026-27 before transitioning to NCAA Division I status in 2027-28. That would make Sacramento State the eighth California program to add women’s flag football.

The Hornets’ immediate bridge is NIRSA’s Women’s Club Flag Football League, which Sacramento State said it would join as the 47th school in the league, with more than 50 expected before the fall semester begins. NIRSA said the league is built to reduce administrative burden and centralize scheduling, standings, rosters and communication, and that it will begin play in January 2027 before ending with a national championship tournament in April 2027. The format is 7-on-7, and the league was launched with NFL backing.

Sacramento State’s move also carried a player-driven angle. Freshman Raia Brown, who starred at St. Mary’s High School in Stockton, petitioned for the sport after wanting to keep playing in college. Her push showed how girls flag football at the high school level is feeding directly into the college pipeline, where club teams now serve as the practical bridge between first announcement and varsity traction.

The larger backdrop arrived in January 2026, when the NCAA added flag football to its Emerging Sports for Women program. With Winthrop building in South Carolina and Sacramento State moving in California, the sport’s college growth is increasingly being organized one club roster, one coach hire and one conference plan at a time.