Nyla Richardson’s flag football career ignited over a four-day span.
Her introduction to the game came from her mother, who told her about the sport’s inclusion in the upcoming 2028 Olympics. Interest in women’s flag football is exploding nationwide, thanks in part to strong support from the National Football League. Fifty girls’ high school teams launched in Ohio over the past year, according to Ideastream Public Media.
The sport again crossed her radar three days later. Richardson, a first-year student at Wittenberg University, got asked to join the school’s flag football team for its inaugural spring 2026 season. As a 5’10” forward on the university’s basketball team, the flag football coaches “knew I could jump,” she joked.
Richardson, 19, quickly fell in love with flag football. Even amid the team’s losses – including a 99-0 rout in their second matchup – she said she’s bolstered by their progress. She envisions playing for the rest of her years at Wittenberg.
“Every game is just a huge change in how much better we get,” she said.
Commitment of student-athletes like Richardson is good news for university officials adding women’s flag football, along with five other sports, to help attract and retain students after years of declining enrollment. More students means more money coming in from tuition and fees.
But the move is not a guaranteed victory for the Springfield school.
Enrolling athletes brings additional expenses, including coaches to pay and facilities to maintain. Small, private four-year campuses such as Wittenberg already operate on slim profit margins. A recent estimate projects more than a quarter of the country’s 1,700 nonprofit private colleges may shut or merge over the next decade.
Colleges providing opportunities for student-athletes is “great,” said Steve Dittmore, who studies the role of athletics in higher education. He is also the dean of the University of North Florida’s College of Education and Human Services.
“But if that becomes the strategy for keeping the lights on at the university, then I think that’s where it becomes problematic,” he said.
Why Wittenberg is adding women’s flag football, other sports
Wittenberg’s campus seems plucked from central casting, dotted with large brick buildings and manicured lawns. The average age of students milling about is 20 years old. Nearly everyone who applied to begin last fall got accepted. Many undergrads play a sport. Most students come from Ohio.
But these days, there are far fewer of them.
Wittenberg enrolled nearly 1,600 undergraduates in spring 2016. Eight years later, that number shrank to about 1,140 students, a nearly 29% drop.
Christian Brady said he knew Wittenberg had “gone through a lot of challenges” when he got tapped to become the university’s 16th president last year.
The university axed 40 employees and five academic majors in a cost-cutting move in 2024. Its accrediting agency took notice of its shaky finances before putting it on probation – a major warning sign in the higher education world – last year. Students aren’t eligible for federal financial aid if a college loses its accreditation.
The board meeting announcing Brady’s appointment was also the same meeting where leaders shared plans for the new sports teams on one condition: His approval.
He got a month to review the proposals.
As he looked them over, he said the list seemed smart. It called to bring back men’s wrestling, a team that had been dormant since 1990 but still had strong alumni support. Other new varsity additions, including flag football, women’s wrestling and women’s ice hockey, could boost the number of female athletes on a campus where women stay enrolled at a higher rate than men.
Another plus: There was already financial support – with the potential for more. Brady said donors pledged to fund the first five years of each sport’s operational expenses.
“Many donors are very candid with us [by saying], ‘Hey, look, you’d be a good steward over the next year or two with this, and I can do more in other areas for the university,’” he said.
Brady ultimately signed off on the additions. He said it’s a win for everyone involved. The university gets a boost with its recruitment and enrollment goals. Donors and alumni get to match their support to a team they care about. Students get to continue playing.
“Lots of our students are interested in some form of sport or activity,” he said. “We need to be paying attention to that, making sure we’ve got strong, healthy programs for them.”
Wittenberg looks to boost non-athlete enrollment
Brady said he’s learned by watching other small colleges try to boost enrollment in ways outside of adding sports. Spending big to add or renovate residence halls or other buildings to attract students “hardly ever works,” he said.
Neither, he said, does offering unsustainably high discount rates for tuition.
Few students pay a university’s full listed price. Many tuition-dependent campuses knock off percentages via scholarships or other financial aid. Like all colleges competing at the NCAA Division III level, Wittenberg can offer academic and need-based financial aid, but no athletic scholarships.
Wittenberg’s current annual cost of attendance (which includes tuition, living expenses and other fees) officially comes in at nearly $61,000, but the most recent federal data shows students actually paid an average of about $24,000. Virtually all of its undergrads – 99% – get grants or scholarships. Nearly 90% received federal student loans.
Still, Brady said he knows Wittenberg needs to enroll more non-athletes. The school is adding offerings outside of sports to try to do just that. A student-run online news organization relaunched last year. There are plans to create a mentoring program that will eventually match every student with a university alum.
Brady said leaders are “really leaning into and emphasizing the value of a liberal arts university.” But, he said, at Wittenberg, that still includes athletics.
“Part of what we’re missing in our conversation about higher education today is that so often the answer is ‘both/and,’” he said. “It’s not ‘either/or.’”
The student-athlete tipping point
Higher education expert Dittmore gets the appeal of collegiate sports outside of the Division 1 level, typically regarded as the highest level of play.
He said those who compete in high school sports are often not ready to shed their identities as athletes, leading them to seek opportunities to keep playing.
And “universities, like any other business, are starting to realize they need to do whatever they can to attract customers,” he said.
Dittmore said he’s curious whether adding sports will help Wittenberg attract more students from outside Ohio. The number of high school graduates in the state is declining. That’s a big deal. Most people who go to college enroll somewhere within 50 miles of their homes.
A few of Ohio’s more than 50 private non-profit colleges recently closed, citing enrollment and financial issues. Northeast Ohio’s Notre Dame College shuttered in 2024. Lourdes University, near Toledo, shut its doors earlier this spring.
About 65% of Notre Dame’s nearly 950 students were athletes, compared to 72% at Lourdes. Wittenberg’s rate clocks in at 53%, according to the most recent federal data. The number could grow as the college launches its new teams.
Dittmore’s research indicates schools with student-athlete populations of 44% or higher are more likely to be in tough financial spots, though he notes that correlation doesn’t always equal causation.
Wittenberg’s not the only Ohio campus getting in on women’s flag football. Half a dozen other similarly sized schools also plan to launch programs over the next few years. The list includes University Heights’ John Carroll University and the University of Mount Union in Alliance.
One national database shows nearly 265 collegiate teams played during the past school year, just five years after the first organized collegiate games began. The majority of squads nationwide are outside of the Division 1 level.
“I think universities are isomorphic, in a lot of ways,” said Dittmore. “They see what somebody else is doing and they try to copy that.”
Wittenberg’s flag football team will become a ‘perennial program’
Wittenberg’s flag football team compiled a 6-12 record in its first season.
“It’s only up from here,” the team wrote in one celebratory Instagram post.
Still, that climb might not be an easy one. The university’s accreditation agency is set to complete another comprehensive review during the upcoming school year.
President Brady hopes the university will get a clean bill of health. He said the university is getting its “financial house” in order, including by bringing in a $9 million fundraising haul. They’re controlling expenses. And this semester’s incoming first-year class is projected to be bigger than last fall’s – “probably larger than the last few years,” he said.
Head women’s flag football coach Chris Johnson is looking to the future, too. That sometimes includes conversations with potential recruits about the university’s challenges.
“I just do the best I can to kind of reassure them that this is a great place and we’re not going anywhere,” he said.
He’s quick to tout things such as the college’s massive indoor training facility as proof of the college’s resources and support. He said he eventually hopes to expand the team’s recruiting pool outside of Ohio and the Midwest.
It’s all part of his plan to build Wittenberg’s team into what he calls a “perennial program” over the next few years.
“All I need is athletes,” he said. “And I’ll turn them into flag football players.”
