flag-prospect-series

Why The Combine Model Is The Right Foundation For Girls Flag Football Recruiting.

Fri, 19 Jun 2026 16:08:41 GMT

Why The Combine Model Is The Right Foundation For Girls Flag Football Recruiting.

In 1982, the NFL introduced the Scouting Combine - a standardized evaluation event where prospects are measured, tested and assessed in a controlled environment using the same format for every athlete.

It wasn't revolutionary because it was new. It was revolutionary because it was standardized.

Before the combine, scouting was fragmented. Teams relied on individual scouts with individual standards evaluating athletes in different environments with different metrics. Comparison was subjective. Decisions were inconsistent.

Sound familiar?

That's exactly where girls flag football recruiting is today.

The combine model works because it solves three problems simultaneously:

It creates a common language. When every athlete is evaluated using the same format, the data means something. A score isn't relative to how good the evaluator was feeling that day... it's relative to every other athlete who went through the same process.

It removes geography as a barrier. A coach in California can evaluate an athlete in Florida with confidence because the data was produced in a standardized environment. The evaluation travels even when the coach can't.

It separates athleticism from exposure. The athletes who get recruited under a fragmented system aren't always the best athletes; they're the most visible ones. A standardized evaluation gives every athlete who participates an equal platform, regardless of how big their social media following is or how well-connected their family is.

Flag Prospect Series is built on this model, adapted specifically for girls flag football. Single-day Recruiting Combines with standardized athletic testing, position-specific drills and controlled competitive reps. Every athlete evaluated by trained FPS staff in the same environment. Every result producing a verified, comparable, searchable profile.

The combine model transformed professional football scouting. There's no reason it can't do the same for girls flag football recruiting.

That's the foundation we're building on.

What girls flag football taught me about what we owe young female athletes

Fri, 19 Jun 2026 16:07:31 GMT

Girls flag football has a recruiting problem. Here's exactly what it looks like.

I've worked in sports for over 20 years. Bowl games, major college events, startup sports ventures. I've seen what world-class infrastructure looks like - the kind that gets built around sports that have institutional backing, television deals and decades of organizational investment.

Girls flag football has none of that history. What it has is momentum - and a generation of young women who showed up to play a sport before anyone built the road for them.

That pattern isn't unique to flag football. It's the story of women's sports broadly.

Female athletes consistently receive less recruiting infrastructure, less media coverage, less data infrastructure and fewer pathways to institutional support than their male counterparts - not because they're less talented or less committed, but because the systems were built around a different athlete first.

The families I've talked to while building Flag Prospect Series describe a recruiting process that is exhausting, opaque and inequitable in a very specific way: the athletes who get seen aren't always the best athletes. They're the athletes whose families have the time, money and connections to navigate a broken system.

That's not a meritocracy. That's a network effect masquerading as one.

What young female athletes deserve - what they have always deserved - is the same thing their male counterparts have had for decades: a standardized evaluation system, verified performance data and a platform that puts their talent in front of decision-makers regardless of where they live or who their parents know.

That's what I'm building with Flag Prospect Series. Not because it's a good business opportunity (though it is) but because I was one of those athletes. I played on one of the first sanctioned girls flag football teams in Florida history. I know what it feels like to show up for a sport that the infrastructure hadn't caught up to yet.

The infrastructure is catching up now.

If you work in youth sports, collegiate athletics or girls sports advocacy - I'd love to connect. This is a conversation worth having.

Girls flag football has a recruiting problem. Here's exactly what it looks like.

Fri, 19 Jun 2026 15:58:31 GMT

Girls flag football has a recruiting problem. Here's exactly what it looks like.

I've spent the last year talking to college coaches, parents, athletes and tournament directors about what's broken in girls flag football recruiting. The answers were remarkably consistent across every group.

Here's what I heard.

From coaches: "We want one central location where we can find verified athlete data and film." Eleven of twelve coaches surveyed said they want a verified data and video platform for girls flag football recruiting - and not one of them had access to anything close to it.

The workaround coaches are using right now: highlight reels on Instagram, cold emails from families and word-of-mouth networks that only reach as far as someone's personal connections. For a sport growing at 60% year-over-year, that infrastructure is unsustainable.

From parents: The burden of self-promotion falls entirely on families. Parents are managing social media accounts for their daughters, compiling highlight packages, cold-emailing coaching staffs and paying for exposure opportunities with no way to verify whether the right people are actually watching.

The families who get their daughters seen aren't always the families with the best athletes. They're the families with the most time, the most resources and the most connections. That's not a recruiting system. That's a network advantage dressed up as one.

From athletes: The athletes themselves often don't know what coaches are looking for, how to present themselves or whether the exposure they're getting is actually reaching decision-makers. The absence of a standardized evaluation format means there's no common language between what athletes are doing and what coaches need to see.

The structural problem: Every recruiting platform that exists was built for tackle football and retrofitted for flag. The position groups are wrong. The evaluation metrics don't translate. The infrastructure assumes a sport that girls flag football is not.

This isn't a technology problem. It's a design problem.

Flag Prospect Series was built from the ground up - for this sport, for these athletes, for the coaches who are trying to recruit them. Standardized athletic testing. Position-specific drills. Verified film. A proprietary performance score that coaches can configure to their own program's priorities.

The sport has outgrown its infrastructure. We're fixing that.