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Devina Lytle might be the most experienced college flag football player in the state of South Carolina.
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Lytle, a senior on USC Upstate’s very first flag football team, played the sport all through her high school years in Las Vegas. Then came a surprise: scholarship offers to play flag football in college.
It was a pinch-me moment for Lytle, and it’s something young women just like her are experiencing with more regularity with the sport’s surge in popularity.
“They just all started trickling in, and it was really exciting,” Lytle told The State. “I feel like that’s really what pushed me. Like a college team did want me. I was just like, dang, let’s look at more options and try to get recruited somewhere.”
Lytle followed coach Noah Harris from Southwestern College in Kansas to USC Upstate in Spartanburg. In February, USC Upstate announced it had hired Harris to build its women’s flag football program from scratch.
Upstate is one of at least six colleges in South Carolina that’s offering — or will soon offer — girls flag football as a varsity sport. The rollout is happening in fits and starts, with some fielding teams now and others not slated to play games until 2028. The Spartans will be the first NCAA Division I flag team in the state to play a game when they take the field in the spring 2027.
Those S.C. schools have one thing in common: They don’t want to miss out on flag football’s big boom.
These SC colleges are adding flag football
Lytle was on Southwestern College’s very first roster and helped their program get rolling from 2024-26. When Harris left for Spartanburg, Lytle and six other players from the Moundbuilders transferred and followed him.
She’s been in on the ground floor of one program-building process and is excited to do it again in her senior year at USC Upstate.
“When I was getting recruited, there were 18-plus schools, and now there’s 60-plus schools [with flag],” Lytle said. “… Flag football was just an NAIA sport; now it’s at the Division-I level. That did push me as well because we’re still the future. We’re building what the next generation is going to have.”
There are 18 varsity teams at the Division-I level that will be playing in the 2026-27 academic year, according to CollegiateFlagFootball.com That is set to increase to at least 20 the following year. Most schools fielding teams are mid-majors. Nebraska was the first Power 4 school to start a varsity program.
Harris and the USC Upstate women’s flag football team will be playing an independent schedule in 2027. In 2028, the Spartans will be a member of the Big South conference.
“It’s very trendy, and I don’t mean that in a negative way, but it’s a reality,” Harris said. “It’s new. It’s trendy. This is America. People are gonna do what’s trendy.”
Elsewhere around the Palmetto State, Claflin, Newberry and Erskine will all compete in flag football at the Division-II level.
Here’s a quick list of colleges with flag football varsity teams in South Carolina:
- USC Upstate: Playing an independent D-1 schedule in 2027. Big South in 2028 (D-1)
- Charleston Southern: Will begin play in the Big South in 2028 (D-1)
- Erskine: Will begin play in the Conference Carolinas in 2027 (D-2)
- Newberry: Will begin play in the Conference Carolinas in 2027 (D-2)
- Claflin: Transitioning from club to varsity play in the CIAA in 2027 (D-2)
- North Greenville: Will begin play in the Conference Carolinas in 2028 (D-2)
Clemson, Winthrop and Coastal Carolina all have flag football, but only as club sports.
Charleston Southern announced the creation of its varsity program on Jan. 27. While USC Upstate already has 19 athletes on campus and practicing, CSU is giving new head coach Anegla Villarreal-Ortiz a bit more time to build the program up. The Buccaneers won’t start playing until spring 2028.
“I didn’t want to feel like I was rushing or trying to pull a team together that I wasn’t fully confident in,” said Villarreal-Ortiz, who is a stellar flag football player in her own right. “I wanted to just take my time. I’m in a different situation to where there are a lot of schools that announced that they were going to be having the sport and everything, but they were starting this coming year. … We’re in the space where we have this whole year. There’s no point in rushing.”
Claflin, a small college in Orangeburg, began as a club team two years ago but will compete at the varsity level starting with the 2027 spring season. The Panthers’ team was mainly built from women who were already on campus, but head coach Perry Brown is beginning to expand the program’s recruiting horizons.
“Most of my girls played another sport in high school,” Brown said. “But I do have a few that did play some type of flag football in high school, whether it was with the high school or with a club team in the state, but a majority of them played basketball and ran track. … All I’ve got to do is teach them how to catch.”
Erskine was set to play in the spring of 2026 but delayed the inaugural season until spring 2027 because of “unexpected roadblocks.” Ester Alencar was hired to be head coach in February 2025 but left the program eight months later, citing issues attaining a work visa in a social media post.
In March, Erskine announced it had hired Bryce Jeffcoat to take over the reins of the program. Jeffcoat just happens to also be the tight ends coach for the Erskine football team.
“There’s certainly been a ton of progress. … I would not say we’re on the ground floor, but we’re probably taking the steps up to get to the second floor from the first floor, is where we’re at right now,” Jeffcoat said. “The girls here, they’ve been through quite the time. They came expecting in their minds to play a season. We had some hardships fall on us and it just kind of wasn’t in the cards. And they’ve been able to pivot.”
Newberry is also set to start competing in 2027. North Greenville will begin play in 2028, joining Newberry in Conference Carolinas.
The state of college women’s flag football
Flag football, especially the women’s game, is one of the fastest-growing sports in America.
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While it’s been a big deal at the NAIA level for a few years, the NCAA is just now catching on. The sport is on track for NCAA-sanctioned status in spring 2028, a move that will create flag football national championships.
So why are colleges in South Carolina and across the country adding flag football as a varsity sport?
The biggest factor is the general boom in popularity around the sport in the last five years. That’s thanks, in part, to the NFL’s promotion of the sport and the fact it will be an Olympic sport (for men and women) come 2028.
It also helps that 24 states, including Washington, D.C., have sanctioned flag football at the high school level. The NFL, which has been a major financial supporter of the sport, announced Sept. 2 that flag football is now one of the 10 most-popular girls sports in the country.
Five years ago, 15,716 girls played flag football in high school. That number is up to 102,360.
“I’ve always loved football,” USC Upstate junior Andrea Moon said. “…There’s so much talent that goes into [flag]. There’s so much information that goes into it. It’s just so fun. I’m a diver, so diving for flags is something I’m always gonna do. I just fell in love with it quickly.”
College athletics as a whole are costly, and adding an entirely new program isn’t cheap. But, in the grand scheme of things, adding flag football isn’t a big strain on budgets.
Schools don’t usually have to invest in new stadiums for their flag programs because they already have soccer and football fields the program can use. That’s a huge money saver when it comes to adding a team.
“We happen to have the facilities right now,” USC Upstate Athletic Director Matt Martin said. “… So we can plug and play. Whereas other sports you have to build a facility, put in a video board, all that stuff. It’s all going to cost money.”
USC Upstate’s team will play on campus in its County University Soccer Stadium. Charleston Southern will play at Buccaneer Field, the same stadium its football team uses for home games.
“We will run it just like they do at Williams-Brice for the Gamecocks,” Charleston Southern Athletic Director Jeff Barber said. “Video board, music and all the things we do like we do to run a regular normal football [game], we’ll do the same with flag football.”
Combine that with lower equipment costs — a set of flags costs about $40, Barber said — and you’ve got yourself a relatively cost-friendly way to add a sport.
“We’re looking at it as, we want to treat them the same as our Division I men’s and women’s basketball teams, and it just happens to be that the sport itself doesn’t cost that much to start up,” Martin said.
The flag football operating budget for USC Upstate — the lone public school in the state with a team — sits around $37,000 a year, according to documents provided to The State. Operating expenses for the program for the 2026-27 year are actually closer to $70,200 once you factor in transportation, meals and insurance costs the university covers.
USC Upstate was one of several schools in the Big South and Conference Carolinas who received some NFL “seed funding” to help start their programs, according to Riley Fields, director of community relations for the Carolina Panthers. Upstate received $30,000 from the NFL.
“The NFL invested in the Big South Conference and basically said, ‘If you guys come to the table, we will help sponsor the startup cost,’” Martin said. “…To be honest with you, that $30,000 has essentially paid for everything we need for year one.”
Barber, Charleston Southern’s AD, told The State their budget is “not at six figures, but we’ve got a very healthy budget.”
Another big pro to adding a women’s flag football team for the schools in South Carolina is Title IX.
Both Martin and Barber said they were looking to add another sport anyway in an effort to provide more scholarship opportunities for women athletes. Upstate considered such sports as women’s wrestling, tumbling and triathlon, and Charleston Southern considered women’s lacrosse before both landed on flag football.
“I think everyone was seeing, there’s a ton of young women that are really invested in the sport, and that want opportunities to play at the collegiate level,” Martin said. “It’s only going to grow. So how can we try to get out in front of it and be at the forefront of that? Versus in 10 years being behind the eight-ball, so to speak.”
Flag football athletes at Upstate, CSU, Erskine and Claflin are all on partial scholarships. Even though they aren’t on full rides, Lytle, Moon and sophomore Aiyana Sims — who all played for Harris at Southwestern (NAIA in Kansas) — said they receive substantially more scholarship money at USC Upstate.
And still, colleges are leaning on athletes of all backgrounds — soccer, basketball, you name it — to help fill their first flag football rosters.
“When you think about flag football, it’s just such an easy sport to grasp,” said Harris, the Upstate coach. “I think young ladies who have played other sports, they start playing flag, and they’re just naturally good at it. And they’re like, “Oh, OK, I want to do this.’”
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