Kirtland wins Northeast Ohio's third girls flag football championship in four years at Cleveland Browns Stadium

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Nina Loncar remembers watching her older cousins ​​Louie and Owen Loncar dominate defense as linebackers for state football teams in Kirtland.

She turned those memories into her own skills and applied them Monday at Cleveland Browns Stadium with interceptions and big plays that helped propel the Hornets to their third girls high school flag football championship in the last four years for Northeast Ohio helped.

“We all love this sport,” she said of her family tradition. “It makes a lot of fun.”

Loncar, a senior who also runs track and field in the spring, helped provide Kirtland's defensive bigs in Monday's tournament, which began with 28 teams and ended with the Hornets' 6-0 win over Berkshire in the final. Neither team scored until the second half, when Kirtland junior quarterback Kristiana Katic delivered the only touchdown on one of many trick plays designed by Kirtland coach Tiger LaVerde and Cleveland Heights offensive coordinator Kahari Hicks. who served as LaVerde's assistant.

Katic handed the football over for a reverse and rolled in as a receiver for the game-winning play. She thwarted the reception but secured the ball before she could evade the Berkshire defenders.

“I threw myself in and hoped they wouldn’t pull my flag,” said Katic, a first-year flag football player. “It's an exciting moment. These girls have been playing for a while now.”

Kirtland, which has won seven OHSAA state football championships on the boys side, will be equally dominant in the spring. The girls' flag team won the Northeast Ohio flag football title during a pilot 2021 season in Mentor, repeated that the following year by defeating Lake Catholic in the final at Cleveland Browns Stadium and returned to the tournament with four wins on Monday, at in which the teams competed against each other in two 15-minute halves.

Berkshire reached the final after defeating defending champions Willoughby South 21-13.

“It’s been fun watching them develop into the team they are,” Berkshire coach Josh DeWeese said, “but there really is some special talent on this team.”

His team came out on top, defeating Kirtland during the regular season, but fell short against a defense led by Loncar and sophomore Sana Hicks.

“Deep ball has been a big thing for us all year,” DeWeese said, “and we just couldn’t beat it.”

Kirtland not only beat the Badgers, but also reached the final with a 19-0 win against Mayfield.

Here Hicks' presence at Loncar made the difference. Hicks attends John Hay and plays basketball for the Hornets, but since there is no flag football team there, she joined Kirtland's team with her father, Kahari, who developed a friendship with Tiger LaVerde through the Build the Bridge initiative.

“She had a couple big sacks and got a lot of pressure,” LaVerde said. “Let her throw quickly. She had a lot of fun. You know, we do this for fun and these girls had so much fun. Check out this facility. They pay for uniforms and officers, everything. It’s a real asset to the community.”

Flag football is played as a club sport in Northeast Ohio. Tim Stried, communications director, said the OHSAA said it was aware of its growth and has been monitoring its progress.

The sport has grown in Northeast Ohio from five teams in 2021 to nine, 22 and now 51 this year.

Hannah Lee, manager of youth football for the Browns, said Monday she believes another step has been taken toward making girls flag football a varsity sport with the support of the Ohio High School Football Coaches Association. Lee added that the Cincinnati Bengals started girls flag football in southwest Ohio this spring and that their goal is to continue that expansion throughout the state.

Eleven states have adopted it as a varsity sport.

“I can’t believe what happened to this,” Loncar said. “I love how seriously we take it. There was a lot of fun.”

Not only did they get to play on the Browns' home field, but they also got to play in front of coach Kevin Stefanski, along with cornerbacks Greg Newsome II and Justin Hardee. Loncar also had some fun with her teammates by getting LaVerde, a Pittsburgh Steelers fan from Pennsylvania, to put on a Browns jersey as they celebrated their latest title.

That's something their older cousins ​​couldn't do.

Contact sports reporter Matt Goul via X (@mgoul), Subjects (@mgoul) or E-Mail ([email protected]).