The college is one of five teams in the United East Conference to hold a sponsored flag football program.<\/p>\n
After one season of club competition at Keystone College, the Giants women\u2019s flag football program now has a spot in NCAA competition.<\/p>\n
The United East Conference recently announced that the conference is sponsoring women\u2019s flag football for five of its teams in the upcoming 2025-26\u2019 season.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe United East is going to be the fourth NCAA conference overall and the second Division III conference to sponsor women’s flag football,\u201d said Keystone\u2019s Athletic Director, Kacy Manning.<\/p>\n
Keystone College, along with Penn-State Harrisburg, Cairn University, Cedar Crest University and Gallaudet University will now compete at the varsity level. Adding women\u2019s flag football as the 21st official sport in the conference.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’ll add some more games to the schedule and the NCAA will eventually have an NCAA championship for the sport,\u201d said Manning.<\/p>\n
Keystone alumni, Ben Arsenault, has been chosen as the head coach of the inaugural team. Arsenault played men\u2019s flag football and will take on duties as the head women\u2019s basketball coach, as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think there’s going to be growing pains as with anything that’s starting fresh,\u201d said Arsenault. \u201cYou know, I think there’s a lot of opportunity for the women on campus. A lot of multi-sport athletes, you know, athletes who will solely focus on flag- and it’s just a great opportunity in general to be competitive at the varsity level and get to do something new and fun,\u201d said Arsenault.<\/p>\n
Arsenault hopes to begin early off-season work with the team in the fall. Building a program from the ground up and having a fresh start is something that excited Arsenault when making the decision to return to his alma mater.<\/p>\n
He mentions a long-term vision is to have 20 or so women on the roster with enough interest in the program.<\/p>\n
The Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association (PIAA) has also sanctioned girls’ high school flag football for the 2025-26\u2019 school year. A handful of schools across the state will compete at the varsity level in the upcoming season. More schools in Northeastern and Central PA will join the movement in the upcoming years, and the Keystone flag football program is looking forward to tapping into local recruitment.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, have a niche maybe that some of our competitors don’t, so it’d be kind of fun to be able to offer them the ability to play at the collegiate level where maybe other programs are just starting out and don’t have that opportunity. We do,\u201d said Arsenault on recruiting local talent.<\/p>\n
Pennsylvania is the 13th state in the U.S. to sanction girl\u2019s flag football. As of July 2025, 16 total states have sanctioned the sport.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that it’s really going to be one of our fastest growing sports. Our roster is just going to grow in the coming years and right now the United East has five schools that are committed to varsity programs, but I think that we’ll see that number increase over the next few years,\u201d said Manning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The college is one of five teams in the United East Conference to hold a sponsored flag football…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":92599,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[1318,1317,1315,1316,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-92598","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-ncaafootball","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114916444310485612","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92598\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}