Downey, Next Level Sports partner to bring all-girls youth flag football to Modesto
Prospective female student athletes in the Stanislaus District and beyond will have the chance to jump-start their flag football careers this spring when Next Level Sports hosts its first youth girls flag football league in Modesto.
Next Level Sports, which hosts a winter co-ed flag football league at Downey High School from Jan. 11 to March 8 for kids in kindergarten through seventh grade, will expand to fit a growing need in the Central Valley. The league and the Knights will partner to bring a spring flag football league for girls in first to seventh grades from March to May.
All games are coached and officiated by high school students from Downey and surrounding schools.
Next Level Sports, a national organization that has youth flag football in 22 states, as well as basketball and volleyball leagues, is in its seventh co-ed season at Downey.
Paul Willerup, who works with Next Level Sports in business development, said that this winter and spring, there are 40 sites in California, Oregon, Arizona, Florida, Georgia and Nevada that will have all-girls flag football leagues.
“We introduced girls flag football and it started to take off,” Willerup said. “At some of the sites where we have large registrations, we introduced flag football for just girls. It’s exciting, it’s growing, it’s getting a lot more visibility.”
A new flag football league helps young girls in Modesto and surrounding cities in the Stanislaus District get a jump-start on playing the game that became a CIF sport just a couple of seasons ago.
During the sport’s first season, public schools in Modesto did not field teams. In the Stanislaus District, Central Catholic was the first school in Modesto to field a team along with every school in the Central California Conference, which consists of Merced-area schools, and a few schools in the Trans-Valley League But by the sport’s second year, every Modesto public high school had a team and nearly every other high school in Modesto played games.
This winter in California, there are 10 all-girls flag football Next Level sites in San Francisco, the East and South Bay, Sacramento and Southern California. In the spring, there will be 20 sites in the East, North and South Bay, San Francisco, Sacramento and Central Coast and two in the Central Valley: Downey High and San Joaquin Memorial High School in Fresno.
Sign-ups have already started and they are hoping to have around 100 girls sign up, which Downey High head football coach and Downey’s Next Level Sports site director Jeremy Plaa said is a good start for the first season. They hope for growth similar to the winter co-ed league, which started with over 150 kids and is now up to 500 in its seventh season at Downey.
“With girls flag football starting at the high school level, (Next Level Sports) is finding areas where they think it would be good to start up a girls league,” Plaa said.
According to the National Federation of State High School Associations, high school girls flag football was once again the biggest growing girls sport in the nation. NFHS numbers published in September said 68,847 girls participated in the sport in 2024-25, a 60% increase from the year prior. Also, schools sponsoring the sport increased by nearly 1,000.
The expanded partnership between Next Level Sports and Downey High allows Modesto-area girls to get experience in the sport before they reach high school like other Central Valley schools in the Sac-Joaquin Section and surrounding sections in the California Interscholastic Federation.
“Prepare your young athlete to possibly play in high school at the varsity level,” Willerup said.
The spring girls league will follow the same format as the winter co-ed league.
Sundays are the only days when parents and athletes are required to show up, creating just a two-hour commitment and making it convenient to attend. Practice is one hour, then they play games for an hour.
“Parents with multiple kids don’t have to run all over Modesto for practices and games,” Plaa said.
The co-ed league uses mostly boys coaches, but Plaa said there is a plan to have high school girls who play flag football or are interested in coaching head the spring league teams.
“If there are any parents interested in signing up their daughter for the spring league, they can come out for any of the next few Sundays and see what it’s like because the winter model is going to be utilized in March,” Plaa said. “We have a handful of girls signed up for the winter league that have already signed up for the spring league too because they love the sport.”
This story was originally published January 21, 2026 at 3:55 PM.
