"We Arrived": The preparation of Brockport Women's Flag Football inaugural varsity season

By: Dylan O'Loughlin

BROCKPORT, NY --- It has been a year full of improvement for Brockport Athletics from tournament bids and conference championships, but there has been no change greater than the addition of women’s flag football. Brockport’s 24th varsity sport was just an idea a year ago, but the offseason is in full swing, preparing for its first ever season this spring. 

Brockport has already begun its offseason preparing for its first inaugural season in March. (Photo Credits: Liv Metz)

Brockport added women’s flag football in February 2025 with the inaugural season set for March 2026. Senior Kat Althouse put the idea in motion. 

“I graduated (high school) right when flag football came to high school and I didn’t get to play since I was a senior and I was already playing softball. I get to college and it’s rolling around junior year and I’m like ‘why hasn’t this reached collegiate level yet,’” Althouse said. “That seems kind of silly because in New York State pretty much every high school has flag football now. So I just took the initiative of I want flag football here because I know I want to do it and I know people coming in would so it would also be good for the school for recruitment opportunities. It all made sense so I just had to do it.” 

Althouse put the plan in motion as women’s flag football became a club sport for the Golden Eagles and had its first club season in Spring 2025. It was the first taste of flag football as a collegiate sport and it only grew from there. 

In its first season as a club sport, Brockport finished with a 7-3 record with its only losses coming against Division II and Division I colleges. The Golden Eagles outscored opponents 211-33, recorded six shutouts and scored three touchdowns or more in seven out of the 10 games. 

In some ways for the Golden Eagles, this club season was the actual start of the offseason in preparation for its first year as a varsity sport in 2026. Even though the record may say otherwise, there was a lot to learn. 

“I loved the season, I enjoyed it so much,” Brockport grad student Cymbri Jefferson said. “But it was a lot of building blocks and starting from the ground up. I’d say we started off a little rocky because we had to educate everyone. We had a lot of classroom practices teaching the girls the game and then putting it out on the field. We would practice in the classroom one practice and the next we would be out on the field doing what we were learning. It was a lot, we had to study and if you didn’t come to practice knowing something it would show and a lot of it was about who is willing to sacrifice to build this team.” 

The team brought back everyone who played last year, besides seniors who graduated. This was also the first year of recruiting athletes out of high school to add to the squad.

The biggest change this year is the change at head coach. Last year, Brockport’s club flag football head coach was also the Golden Eagles’ strength and conditioning coach Bryonne Herring, who made the move to Meredith College after receiving the opportunity to become head coach of its women’s flag football team. 

“At first it was really upsetting because Coach B and I have a really strong bond and I look up to him as a person and a role model,” Jefferson said. “I always have, so losing him was definitely hard and hard on the girls too, but I’m glad that they filled his spot with someone who values a lot of the same things that he did. She’s such a fun-spirited woman and is also very determined. She has discipline for us and I think that’s such a great mix and exactly what we need.” 

That someone is SUNY Brockport alum and the inaugural coach of Brockport women’s flag football, Charrise Everett. For Everett, football has been in her DNA. 

“I have always been a football fan,” Everett said. “I tried playing football when I was younger and eventually you get to a certain age where it was like ‘yeah, you can’t do this.’ But football has become more available for women too. I always enjoyed football, I currently play on the Upstate Competitors which is a tackle team for females. So, I think in general football for women is growing, whether it’s flag or tackle. Football is becoming a sport where women can say ‘I can too’ and I think the little girl in me is smiling because of it.” 

Charrise Everett coaching her squad during an offseason practice. (Photo Credits: Liv Metz)

Everett graduated from Brockport in 2021 with a Bachelor’s in Physical Education Teacher Education. She went on to become the athletic director and physical education teacher at Young Women’s College Prep (YWCP). 

She has experience coaching as well. Everett started the girls flag football program in 2022 at East Irondequoit High School where she was the head coach there, leading the Lancers to the sectional quarterfinals. Everett also coached boys’ modified and junior varsity football, becoming one of the first female football coaches in the area. 

Despite having a comfortable position at Eastridge High where the flag football program was only growing, Everett made to move to Brockport to give back to the place that made her. 

“I thought why not take a chance on myself and that’s what I did,” Everett said. “I would say aside from the belief that other people had in me, another reason why I wanted to come here was because I graduated here. I'm an alumni and to say I can help bring this sport or help grow this sport at a school I went to is a big thing.” 

Everett comes into the head coaching job for one ultimate goal, an Empire 8 Championship, but before that can happen, the Golden Eagles need to establish a culture. For Everett, the culture is the identity. 

“Our biggest thing for culture is developing who we are, our identity is family,” Everett said. “We don’t have the luxury of being established and having girls already there so we are developing our identity together. We are developing who we are together, we went down and made a list of standards, we wrote those together. We talked about values, so 35-plus-me is working as one to make sure that culture is alive. But family first is what I preach more than anything. We don’t succeed when the family is feuding so we must be all on the same page, being here for the same reason and developing that family atmosphere.” 

As a family, Brockport women’s flag football has taken the offseason one day, one step at a time. In its first offseason as a team, the Golden Eagles have put a focus on creating a scheme for the upcoming season and of course, conditioning. 

“Conditioning was one, that was a big thing because a lot of girls probably didn’t do anything over the summer,” Everett said. “Some of them didn’t think about joining the team until the school year started, so just making sure we’re conditioned and ready to go because once the spring hits, right after spring break we have one or two games every weekend, sometimes three so we have to be ready to go. Then learning the new system, the system that they were in before is different from the system I’m putting in so learning a new system, making sure we’re fundamentally at the same level and developing a foundation is what we’ve really been working on.”

On an athletics team, it takes two to tango, the coach and the players. Luckily for Coach Everett, the players are buying into what she is preaching. 

“I think people aren’t ready for what we have cooking here,” Althouse said. “We have recruits now, we are at a varsity level, we are training at a varsity level. We’re lifting, we spend our offseason conditioning every single practice and our coach isn’t playing around. I think now with this new team, with the recruits and those high school athletes that played at the high school level, it’s really meshing into something great. We have a lot to prove, but also got to go by our morals we set as a team. We are creating a culture that is strong and whatever we want, we can get it.” 

The Brockport Golden Eagles have been practicing every week in preparation for this season. To go along with that, Brockport has even set up exhibition tournaments during this offseason to practice live game action as well, all to get ready for the upcoming season. 

Brockport will compete in the Empire 8 in 2026 thanks to its partnership with the NFL and RCX Sports. The Golden Eagles will face familiar foes including SUNY Geneseo, Elmira, Hartwick and Russell Sage as all teams are looking for its first flag football crown in program history. 

For the Golden Eagles, as the offseason continues and the regular season gets closer, the excitement just keeps rising. Not only for the first game of the season, but for the impact this team is having on women’s sports as well. 

“I don’t even know if it’s a describable feeling, but it’s definitely an excitement,” Everett said. “It’s a ‘We Arrived’ type feeling and to know that at the end of the season, we have a chance to play for a championship. It’s not just a season where they just play, they’re playing for something. The Empire 8 has put their name behind us and supported us to where there’s going to be a first ever women’s flag football champion. We’re excited, up for the challenge and ready to add our name to SUNY Brockport Athletics history.”

The Brockport women’s flag football season kicks off on Thursday March 19, 2026 in Buffalo at Sahlen Stadium (Home of the Buffalo Bisons). The Golden Eagles start its season against D’Youville University with the road to a championship starting at 8 p.m.