Girls Flag Football League playoff night will be May 6 at Cleveland Browns Stadium – News-Herald

NEO Girls Flag Football League playoff night is May 6 at Cleveland Browns Stadium. (Tim Phillis – For The News-Herald)

Supremacy in girls flag football will be on the line when the Northeast Ohio Flag Football League holds its annual playoff tournament on May 6 at Cleveland Browns Stadium.

26 varsity teams will take to the field in search of flag football glory. The games start at 4:30 p.m. The semifinals will be played at 8:00 p.m., with the championship game scheduled to begin at 8:30 p.m.

“It’s going to be exciting,” said Bob Berwald, vice president and co-founder of NEO Flag. “It’s exciting to see where we started and where we’re going. Seeing how it’s grown and watching us play on that stage, you can’t help but be a little emotional.”

The matches in the first round are:

• Madison vs. Magnificat, with the winner playing as a mentor.

• Berkshire vs. Cleveland Central Catholic, with the winner facing the winner of Perry and Akron Early Learning.

• Lake Catholic vs. Warrensville Heights, with the winner playing in the South.

• Berea-Midpark vs. Cleveland Heights, with the winner taking on VASJ.

• Maple Heights vs. Bedford, with the winner playing Brush.

• Mayfield vs. Riverside, with the winner facing the winner of Lorain and Elyria Catholic.

• NDCL vs. Hawken, with the winner taking on Euclid.

• Shaker Heights vs. Lutheran East, with the winner playing Kirtland.

The 26-man field was seeded from top to bottom based on the entire regular season, excluding last week, Berwald said, to give teams as much notice as possible if they had concerns about buses to Cleveland Browns Stadium .

Mentor is the top seed while Brush is the second seed. Games will be played with 12-minute halves, as opposed to the 20-minute halves played in the regular season. The shortened games are necessary in order to be able to play the entire tournament in one day.

This will be the second year the Browns have hosted the tournament, following the 2022 season. The field was unavailable last season.

“I still remember the first time,” said Berwald. “Seeing the girls run out of the tunnel onto the field was so exciting. My daughters still talk about it. There will be 300 girls out there on Monday night and for them all to have that memory is pretty cool.”

Berwald recalled the rapid growth of the NEO Flag Girls League, which started with five teams in its first year and nine teams in its second year, the first year it used Cleveland Browns Stadium. Last year the league grew to 22 teams, then this year it increased to 51 – with 28 varsity teams and 23 junior varsity teams.

“The first year we didn’t quite get to 60 girls,” he said. “Now we have 300 players in the stadium on Monday. With 51 total teams and at least 10 girls on each team, that means there are over 500 girls playing high school flag football in this area. It is wonderful.”