CLEVELAND — Cameron Mitchell had been inside Huntington Bank Field plenty of times before Monday, May 12. It is, after all, the third-year Browns cornerback’s home stadium.
Mitchell, though, had never quite been in the stadium for something like the event for which he was there on this night. He was one of three players representing the Browns at the Girls High School Flag Football Championships, a 16-team tournament that included teams from Massillon and Archbishop Hoban.
“I just think it’s dope,” Mitchell told the Beacon Journal. “This is my first time coming to an event like this and just seeing that it’s on a scale like this now already, just it’s optimistic for a future. It’s great.”
Mitchell’s teammate Greg Newsome II has long been actively involved as an ambassador for the team in promoting girls flag football. The event at the stadium was the third consecutive year the Browns had hosted such a tournament, and the second year it was held at the massive lakefront stadium.
Newsome said it’s experiences like what his own teammate went through by coming to the event that have led to the rapid growth of girls flag football. Flag football for both men and women will be sanctioned sports in the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, with the NFL even looking at permitting active players to participate in the games.
“I just think just people actually going out and just going to support and going to watch and see that the girls are capable of making some spectacular plays and doing a lot of cool things,” Newsome said of the reasons behind the growth. “They actually genuinely have love for the sport. So I think people are starting to see it. I think a lot of more athletes are starting to push it out there more, so I think that’s what’s helping.”
The next step takes place Sunday, May 18, when four teams that emerged from the Browns’ tournament will face off against four teams who came out of a similar event hosted by the Cincinnati Bengals for the “state championship.” That will take place from noon to 5 p.m. at Massillon’s Paul Brown Tiger Stadium.
Massillon will be one of the four teams, having reached the semifinals of the Browns’ tournament, along with tournament champion Willoughby South, Edgewood and Berkshire. The four Cincinnati-area teams are Mount Notre Dame, Hamilton Badin, Seton and Shroder.
The tournament isn’t officially sanctioned by the Ohio High School Athletic Association, although it has been looking at the possibiity for a couple of years. More than 100 combined girls flag football teams — most located in either Northeast or Southwest Ohio — participated in either the Browns’ or Bengals’ tournament.
“That has to be a sanctioned sport in this state,” Browns coach Kevin Stefanski said Thursday, May 15, at his Under the Lights camp at the stadium. “It makes me crazy that we have the birthplace of football down the road, we’ve got the Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. Football’s pretty important in this state. It’s important to boys and girls. It’s not just a boys sport.
“We have to get that sanctioned as a sport in Ohio, and I think we’re on our way to doing that. But if we’re going to be such an important bedrock of football in the state of Ohio, which I believe we are, we also have to sanction girls football, girls flag football, so that’s a varsity sport in these high schools.”
Chris Easterling can be reached at ceasterling@thebeaconjournal.com. Read more about the Browns at www.beaconjournal.com/sports/browns. Follow him on X at @ceasterlingABJ
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: ‘It’s not just a boys sport’: Browns throwing support behind growth of girls flag football
Reporting by Chris Easterling, Akron Beacon Journal / Akron Beacon Journal
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