This HBCU conference still has a goal of women’s flag football as a varsity sport

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“My hope is that it will become a varsity sport,” CIAA commissioner Jacqie McWilliams-Parker said of women’s flag football.

DURHAM, N.C. — Founded in 1912, the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association is the oldest conference for athletics at historically Black colleges and universities.

Last week, the CIAA and its teams gathered at a hotel in North Carolina’s Research Triangle for a media day to preview the upcoming football season and to celebrate the conference championship game returning to Durham after a decade-long hiatus. Durham County Memorial Stadium will host the CIAA title game this fall as part of a three-year agreement with the Durham Sports Commission.

But Jacqie McWilliams-Parker — who is in her 13th year as the commissioner of the CIAA — still has another form of football on her mind: women’s flag football.

Last October, in collaboration with the NFL and RCX Sports, the CIAA announced it was launching a women’s flag football league for the spring of 2025. Eight of the conference’s 12 members started club teams and in lieu of playing a full season, they met for a championship tournament in Charlotte in April. Winston-Salem State won that inaugural championship by defeating Fayetteville State 9-6.

“I wasn’t expecting that we would have that many schools. I think there’s a lot of institutions that are trying to at least strike the interest of having flag football,” McWilliams-Parker told SB Nation. “And then for them to kind of figure out how they were going to organize themselves for us to have, like a jamboree or a tournament at Johnson C. Smith, was pretty incredible.”

The CIAA is now in the midst of figuring out its next steps with women’s flag football. McWilliams-Parker says member schools in the conference will likely play again this spring as a club sport with another weekend jamboree tournament of sorts. But the goal is to make the sport a varsity one with a full season schedule.

“There’s an intent to play again this spring,” McWilliams-Parker said. “You know, I think everyone’s looking at budgets. I think we put funding in the budget so that we can do this jamboree again. I think there’s still commitment from our institutions, and the women are excited. I think it’d be disappointing if we didn’t do it.”

Back in February, flag football made a significant stride in gaining ground in the college ranks when the NCAA recommended adding it to its Emerging Sports for Women program. It could enter that program at the next NCAA convention in January 2026. Since its inception in 1994, the program has had success in converting sports like rowing, ice hockey, water polo, bowling and beach volleyball into varsity women’s sports across the NCAA. Most recently, women’s wrestling was granted widespread varsity status and the NCAA will host the sport’s first sanctioned championship this winter.

Since the announcement came that women’s flag football was recommended to the Emerging Sports for Women program, a handful of Division I schools have announced plans to start varsity programs. That group includes Mount St. Mary’s, UT Arlington and Alabama State — an HBCU that plays in the SWAC. This past season, the Division III America East held a full varsity season capped off with a conference championship.

More conferences will play full varsity seasons next year too, including the Empire 8 (D3), Conference Carolinas (D2) and United East (D3). In the past week, two more schools — Allegheny College and Westminster College, both in Division III — announced they were adding varsity women’s flag football teams too.

The CIAA doesn’t plan on being too far behind.

“Once it becomes an official sport for (the NCAA), most likely it appears that our conference is going to have it as a varsity sport,” McWilliams-Parker said. “Right now it’s a club sport for us because I think we’re just trying to figure out the interest, but I think there’s a strong interest in our conference to have it as a varsity sport.

“And then in 2026-27, my hope is that it will become a varsity sport. So, we’ll have a season and we’ll do scheduling.”

McWilliams-Parker says that the NFL met with all four of the NCAA HBCU conferences — a group that also includes the SIAC in Division II and the MEAC and SWAC in Division I — and pitched them on flag football about four years ago. As the sport barrels towards debuting at the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, the sport has been growing in popularity at the high school and college levels with the NFL’s help.

“We’ve been talking about (flag football) probably before it even got bigger. I just think for us is, where does the funding come from? We want to add sports, but we don’t want to take away the current sports that we already have,” McWilliams-Parker said. “Hopefully we’ll get some additional funding this year, we’re working on that as well. But if not, I still think the schools are committed to having that platform. It’s great with numbers for gender equity, and just beyond that, there’s interest in participation.”

McWilliams-Parker — who is the first woman to serve as commissioner of the CIAA — graduated from a Division I HBCU, Hampton University. Another hope she has is that, as women’s flag football grows in her conference and across the country, that the HBCUs can partner together on scheduling.

“I think it’d be really fun if we could figure out how to do an HBCU flag football tournament or week, or something like that. We’ll get there,” she said. “We’re going to be meeting this summer to kind of strategize what sports and collaboration looks like for us.”