The first season of a National Football League-sponsored flag football program has come to an end in Penticton.
After two and a half months of gridiron action at McNicoll Park, the "Ravens" captured the city's inaugural NFL Flag Football championship on June 15.
Games were hosted by the less than two-year-old South Okanagan Football Association (SOFA), which presented the team athletes between the ages of 11 to 13 with the league's championship trophy on June 25.
"The season went better than we ever could have imagined for the first year," said SOFA president Glen Burlingame, adding that 80 kids registered to play in the league.
Flag football is a non-contact sport that was first introduced in the 1990s by the NFL to teach kids the basic skills and fundamentals of football.
"It can be very competitive, but also as fun as you want," Burlingame said. "It's very inclusive for all skill levels."
Branded as NFL Flag Football, the organization has programs in communities across the United States and Canada.
SOFA jumped on board earlier in 2025, bringing the sport to Penticton for the first time this spring season.
Burlingame said he hopes flag football will play a role in helping SOFA attract more interest and participation to its tackle football program.
"People get a taste of (football) through flag and then they want to keep playing," he said. "We're building up that awareness for both tackle and flag football in town."
SOFA is home to the Penticton Mavericks, who played their inaugural season with 26 kids last fall as part of the British Columbia Provincial Football Association's U12 division.
The Mavericks will return this August, this time as a U14 squad. They'll be led by Trevor Goodman —a former Kelowna football coach — and battle teams across B.C. Interior through November.
"It was a success last season and this flag football league now is building off of that," Burlingame said.
The association's president said he expects around 160 people to register for NFL Flag Football in 2026 as SOFA adds more age groups.
Many of those new participants, Burlingame added, could be girls. Out of the 80 kids register for this year's league, 79 were boys.
"If you look at the United States and NCAA, this is a massive girls' sport," he noted. "So we're really going to push girls' flag football that next season through schools."
Nicole Sackvie, fundraising and brand coordinator with SOFA, thanked the sponsors, including IGA, for helping make the association's first season a success.
For the first time, flag football will be a sport at the 2028 Summer Olympics when the global event heads to Los Angeles, Calif.
