Seahawks, Bucs, Canada and Mexico Win NFL FLAG Titles

Four days of flag football at Grand Park Sports Campus in Westfield, Indiana ended Sunday with a one-point overtime finish, a runaway, and two international titles headed out of the country. The 2026 NFL FLAG Championships presented by Toyota, which ran July 23 through July 26, brought more than 325 teams to a single campus north of Indianapolis, with regional qualifiers tied to all 32 NFL clubs and 15 international squads from five continents.

It was the first time the tournament has been staged in an NFL club market, and the scale showed. ESPN and its partners carried 34 games out of Westfield, 30 of them on linear television across ESPN, ESPN2, ABC, NFL Network, ESPN Deportes, Disney Channel and Disney XD, with distribution into more than 125 countries. For the first time, the international bracket made the broadcast slate.

A Classic in the Girls' Final

The girls' high school championship was the game of the weekend. The Los Angeles Seahawks and the Austin Texans traded scores the entire way and went to overtime tied, and the Seahawks won it 15-14 on the last snap that mattered.

Los Angeles quarterback Ava Ortman opened the scoring with a throw to Mya Smith. Austin answered when Emery Beckett found Zahra Hill, and Kaitlyn Reynolds later caught a go-ahead touchdown for the Texans after breaking up a pass on defense. Ortman hit Smith over the middle to force the extra period. In overtime, Smith went up for a leaping grab just inside the end zone line and the pylon, and the Seahawks had the trophy.

Indianapolis Colts owner Kalen Jackson presented the trophy on the field, closing out a weekend the Colts organization had spent two years lobbying to bring to central Indiana.

Ocala Rolls

The boys' 14U final was over early. The Ocala Bucs, out of Marion County, Florida, jumped the New York City Ravens with a touchdown pass from Drake Eason to Kingstyn Henderson, then a deep ball to Duke Simpkins for a 15-0 lead, and two defensive pick-sixes turned it into a 33-21 win.

Eason threw for 168 yards and three touchdowns in the final and returned interceptions for scores in back-to-back games, including a one-handed pick-six in a 19-18 semifinal survival against the Giants. "We keep pushing. We couldn't let off the break," Eason said afterward. Colts quarterback Daniel Jones handed out the hardware at midfield.

Canada and Mexico Take the World Bracket

The international brackets, televised in the United States for the first time, produced the weekend's two other headline titles.

Canada won the 15U Coed championship 19-13 over Mexico in a game that came down to the final play, a Mexican incompletion in the closing seconds. Canadian quarterback Blake Cyprynski went 14 of 19 for 157 yards and three touchdowns. Canada had reached the final by beating Brazil 29-12; Mexico had come through China 33-26.

Mexico did not leave empty-handed. In the 15U Girls final, Mexico beat Panama 20-7, avenging a 20-19 pool-play loss to the same opponent a day earlier. Debanhi Yazmin Sifuentes Acevedo accounted for all three Mexican touchdowns while throwing for 73 yards, rushing for 27 and catching 29, and she added two interceptions on defense. Panama had reached the final by shutting out Great Britain 20-0.

The Individual Awards

The four televised finals produced three most valuable player awards, and each went to a quarterback who also played defense. Eason took the boys' 14U tournament MVP. Cyprynski was named MVP of the 15U Coed championship game. Sifuentes Acevedo won 15U Girls final MVP after accounting for every Mexican touchdown and adding two interceptions.

No most valuable player was announced for the girls' high school final, and the NFL has not released its 2026 NFL FLAG Players of the Year. Finalists for that award were recognized Friday at Grand Park alongside the Oakley All-Tournament Team, but the league has not published the 2026 names.

The Rest of the Field

Two consolation brackets also crowned champions on Saturday: the CK Divas took the high school girls' B bracket and MIA FLAG won the 14U boys' B bracket.

The tournament ran 13 age divisions in total, from 8U through high school on the domestic side plus the two international groups, but only the four televised finals and those two B brackets were reported publicly. Results for the 8U, 10U and 12U divisions and the 14U girls' bracket were kept inside the NFL OnePass app and have not been published, leaving a large share of the weekend's champions unrecorded outside their own communities.

Why Westfield

Moving the championships to Indiana was a capacity decision. Grand Park is the largest youth sports campus in the country, and a tournament that has grown from a few dozen finalists into a 325-team, four-day, 34-game television property needed the fields.

"We're thrilled to bring the NFL Flag Championships to Westfield, Indiana for what will be our biggest and most exciting tournament yet," said Peter O'Reilly, the NFL's executive vice president of events, international and club business, when the site was announced. Izell Reese, chief executive of RCX Sports, which operates NFL FLAG and was acquired in June by a firm backed by Eli Manning, said the event "continues to raise the bar in scale, competition, and overall impact."

The economics followed the teams. Westfield restaurants reported revenue up between 10 and 80 percent over normal for the week, and Colts owner Kalen Jackson framed the bid in state terms: "We are very biased, but we really believe in our state and in our city, and the surrounding cities in hosting these marquee events better than anybody else."

Two Years Out

The timing is what gives Westfield its weight. Flag football debuts at the Los Angeles Olympics in July 2028, and the 15-year-olds who played the international bracket at Grand Park this weekend will be 17 when the Games open. Canada, Mexico, Panama, Great Britain, Brazil, China, Germany and New Zealand all sent teams to Indiana, and several of them are building the same youth pipelines the United States has spent a decade assembling.

On the domestic side the pipeline is already crowded. High school girls' flag football participation reached roughly 69,000 players in 2024-25, a 60 percent jump in a single year, and more than 40 states now sponsor it as a varsity sport. The NCAA designated women's flag football an Emerging Sport for Women in January, the NAIA made it a championship sport in June, and the NFL put $32 million behind a professional league that plans to draft players before the Olympics. The tournament that ended Sunday in Westfield is where a lot of those players are first seen.