The cold settled over Fremont like a dare. A stiff spring wind swept across Heedum Field at Midland University and rattled the metal bleachers. But for the young women in leggings and long sleeves – Nebraska’s first collegiate flag football players – the weather changed nothing. This was football weather, no matter what the calendar said.

On that gray afternoon in March 2024, two dozen friends and family huddled under blankets to watch more than a game. They were watching a new chapter in Nebraska sports take shape.

The Warriors led Southwestern College of Winfield, Kansas, by a touchdown late in the first half. Angel Ioane Kaio, the quarterback whose path had taken her from Hawaiʻi to Alaska to Midland, pulled off her winter coat and jogged to the huddle. The snap smacked into her frozen fingers. She looked over the middle, found Morgan Kalisek and let it go.

Kalisek – the first athlete to sign with Midland’s young program, a Fremont native who had starred in softball and basketball at the high school down the road – made the catch and moved the chains in the final home game of her career. Her friends and family, bundled in coats on the grandstand, rose with the play.

For Kalisek, Allaya Livingston, Ioane Kaio and their teammates, this was more than a Saturday game. It was a chance to prove that football had room for them, too.

 

WOMEN’S FLAG FOOTBALL has grown fast. In 2001, Florida became the first state to sanction girls high school flag football. Since then, participation has surged. NFHS reporting said about 500,000 girls ages 6-17 played in 2023, up 63 percent from 2019. The sport is also set for its Olympic debut at the 2028 Los Angeles Games.

The wave has only grown since Midland launched the program. Seventeen state associations have sanctioned girls flag football, with more weighing the move and others running pilot or independent programs. At the college level, the NAIA said the 2025-26 season would include 35 women’s flag football programs. Midland was early to the sport. In 2022, the university said it had added women’s flag football through an NFL partnership and was among a small first group of colleges offering it.

Flag football is played with seven players a side on an 80-yard field. Instead of tackling, defenders stop a ball carrier by pulling a flag from her waist. The game moves quickly and rewards timing, precision and pursuit.

That growth helped make Midland’s launch in 2020 more than a campus addition. It gave Nebraska a foothold in a sport that was already moving faster in Arizona, Texas, Georgia and Florida than it was on the Plains.

Midland’s first head coach, Jaison Jones, came from youth, high school and semi-pro football. He led the program to a 15-7 record over three seasons before stepping down. That left athletic director Courtney Thomsen looking for a coach on short notice.

Her hire was James Kerwin, a veteran football coach whose background ranged from NFL camps to semi-pro leagues. He had never coached women, and he had never coached flag football.

The season opened against Ottawa University, a national power stacked with Olympic-caliber talent. Midland trailed 39-0 in the fourth quarter.

A few days later, the Warriors nearly upset Kansas Wesleyan. Down 18-14 late, they needed 66 yards to win. They got 40 before time ran out. It was a loss, but not the kind that left a team discouraged. From there, something shifted.

Midland won seven straight games. Three times, the Warriors pitched a shutout. They finished 11-9, and Kerwin stayed on as permanent head coach. Then came the next challenge: convincing top players from around the country to choose a small college in eastern Nebraska.

He also inherited a team that felt unsteady. Some players were considering transferring. Kerwin and Associate Head Coach Chase Anderson believed the only way forward was to build a culture strong enough to hold them together.

He said the players were direct from the start. If something felt off, they said so. He took that as a good sign. Rather than forcing a system onto them, he asked what they liked, what they trusted and where they thought the team could improve. Defensive ideas came from player input. Offensive wrinkles did, too. Over time, doubt gave way to belief.

Thomsen said trust mattered most. Experience in flag football was hard to find, but she wanted someone who understood how to build relationships and steady a young program. The NFL partnership had helped prove there was enough interest to start, but the team still needed the right person to carry it forward.

Thomsen had once imagined a life in athletics herself, playing soccer at the University of Arizona before injuries forced her in another direction. Creating opportunities for women became part of her work. 

Kerwin and Thomsen knew where to look: Arizona, Texas, Georgia and Florida, where girls were already growing up with flag football as part of the athletic landscape. In Nebraska, the pipeline was still thin, so Midland recruited heavily at national tournaments and showcases. None of the players signed after Kerwin’s arrival were native Nebraskans, but they came for the chance to play and to shape a young program.

 

BACK AT HEEDUM FIELD the first half against Southwestern was closing fast.

Midland still held a narrow lead in the second quarter when the defense forced an interception and gave Ioane Kaio another chance. She took the snap, dropped back and saw Livingston streaking up the sideline. The pass was out before the defender could recover.

Livingston had come to Midland from Houston’s Legacy School of Sports Sciences. A late showcase had earned her five scholarship offers. She had once planned on the Air Force. Then flag football opened another lane.

She caught the ball in stride and crossed the goal line. Later, she added an interception of her own. By halftime, Midland led 20-6. In the second half, the Warriors added two more touchdowns and pulled away for a 33-6 win. Afterward, players drifted to a parent’s tailgate in the parking lot for sandwiches and chips, a small-college celebration with the wind still whipping across campus.

Two weeks later, the team traveled to Lincoln for an exhibition at Memorial Stadium as part of the Husker Games. For players who had grown up watching Nebraska from the stands or on television, the setting felt outsized. Midland beat a UNL alumni team 60-0, but the score was beside the point. The memory was walking into Memorial Stadium in uniform and feeling, for an afternoon, how large the sport might become.

For Midland, each game became both competition and demonstration: proof that women’s flag football could draw talent, hold a roster together and build a following in a state still catching up to the sport.

On that same cold Saturday in Fremont, as Midland beat Southwestern a few blocks away, children played flag football outside Fremont Middle School. Girls and boys ran across the grass on three fields, flags flying behind them, while parents watched from folding chairs.

Maybe one day one of those girls will pull on cleats at Heedum Field and see the path more clearly because Midland’s players got there first.