The rapidly growing sport of women’s flag football will make its debut at Hartwick College next week.
“Hartwick wanted to be on the forefront, since the Empire 8 was one of the first conferences to add flag football,” Coach Aaron Zurn said.
Hartwick announced it would field a flag football team in 2024, not long after the Empire 8 decided to debut the sport in spring 2026. Hartwick hired Zurn as its flag football coach in February 2025.
Zurn was an assistant coach with the Hartwick men’s football team for four years, focusing on defensive backs. Before he came to Hartwick, he was an assistant coach for nearby Sidney Central School.
Zurn also played tailback for SUNY Brockport, where he graduated in 2010 with degrees in Communications and Sport Management. Two years later, he got his master’s in Recreation and Leisure Management from Brockport.
Zurn said fielding a team and teaching the players strategy has been a work in progress, for everyone in the new league.
“As coaches start to figure out what works, it will change schematically,” he said. “Right now, people are doing a lot of different things but that will change when there are statistics and film to analyze.”
Of the 19 players on the team, 16 are freshmen. Most were recruited to play flag football. However, a few of them and several of the older players, were athletes who decided to try the new sport.
Co-captain Ellie Kalbach is the only senior and she was a Hartwick volleyball player before deciding to play a new sport this spring.
“Aside from volleyball, to me, it was also an opportunity to leave a mark on campus being a part of the inaugural flag football team,” Kalbach said.
Sophomore Bailey McCoy, freshman Audra Doll and freshman Anne Stanavich are the other captains.
Doll, who will start the season at quarterback, said she never thought about playing flag football in college when she started playing the sport. The opportunity to play flag football in college was one of the biggest reasons she chose Hartwick, she said.
“I think the team is making a lot of progress with the basics and everyone is getting really good at their specific jobs,” she said. “The receivers are running the routes they should be running, and the defense is getting really good at relying on each other to make a stop instead of going one on one.”
Doll also said the defense and offense make each other better in practice every day, leading to rapid improvement from the squad.
Zurn said he believes that as the sport keeps growing, the talent will increase, too.
“I think the product will look a lot different in a few years, in a good way,” he said.
In the meantime, he said the team is excited to kick off. No matter the results, he said his intent is to see the Hawks improve this season and to establish the program’s roots at Hartwick.
Hartwick will begin its inaugural flag football season at 4 p.m., Tuesday, March 24, when Elmira College visits Wright Stadium.