Park University Builds Flag Football Team From a 3-Year-Old Letter

Krishna Lee sent Park University athletic director Kristin Gillette a letter three years before the school ever offered her a job, telling her she wanted to build a women's flag football program from scratch. This spring, that letter becomes reality: Lee is now the Pirates' inaugural head coach, tasked with fielding a roster of roughly 15 players in Parkville, Missouri, and teaching flag football fundamentals to the entire campus along the way.

The U.S. Census Bureau's QuickFacts lists Parkville's April 1, 2020 census population as 7,117.

Park University announced Lee as the leader of its new program on June 15, according to The Kansas City Star. The school had finalized its plans to create the program after a year of internal conversations, and it officially decided to move forward on April 1, per the same report. Gillette focused on Lee specifically for the job, and the two had actually worked together in the NAIA office more than a decade earlier, the Star notes.

Lee brings an elite athletic résumé to Parkville. She captained the U.S. Women's Tackle Football Team to gold at the 2022 IFAF Women's World Championship, a credential highlighted by Park University Athletics. She also spent seven years playing for the KC Glory and KC Titans, earning recognition twice as an All-WNFC linebacker, and has worked with the Glory as general manager since 2022 — a role she will step away from as she builds the Pirates program, according to the Star.

A Career Rooted in Track and Compliance

Before flag football, Lee made her name in track and field at the University of Missouri, where she was a three-time All-American thrower from 2006 to 2009. That collegiate career earned her induction into the University of Missouri Intercollegiate Athletics Hall of Fame as part of the 2024 class, per the university's own account. She later spent six years working in Mizzou's compliance department, giving her an administrative grounding that predates her coaching career, the Star reports.

Lee turned down an offer to start Baker University's flag football program before accepting the Park job, according to the Star's reporting. Her father, Robert Lee, coached and taught students in Kansas City, Kansas public schools, a background she has cited in explaining why she values education alongside athletics. Speaking with the Star, Lee said the degree and personal development her players earn matter more than the game itself, and that she wants to develop good kids, good students and good athletes, in that order.

Building a Roster in a Talent-Rich Region

Park's timing lines up with a broader surge in the sport across the Kansas City area. The metro has nearly 30 high school flag football programs in Kansas and more than 50 in Missouri, per the Star, giving Lee a deep in-region pipeline as she recruits nationally to fill her roster. Nationally, high school girls' flag football participation reached roughly 68,000 student-athletes during the 2024–25 school year, a jump of 25,000 players in a single year across 26 sponsoring state associations, according to Culver-Stockton College Athletics.

Kathrine Swanson, cited by the Star, said the timing was right for Park to launch its program and that the NAIA's decision to add flag football as a championship sport sealed the deal. The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics' National Administrative Council officially approved women's flag football as its 30th championship sport in June 2026, elevating it from invitational status for the 2026–27 academic year, according to the Heart of America Athletic Conference. The sport's first NAIA national championship is scheduled for spring 2027.

A Crowded Heart of America Conference

Park will play its home games at Julian Field, sharing the facility with the men's and women's soccer teams, and will begin conference play this spring against seven other Heart of America Athletic Conference teams, including Baker, William Penn, Missouri Valley and Missouri Baptist. The conference formally announced flag football as an official championship sport back in December 2025, with six schools already playing, according to the same conference release. Ottawa University has dominated early competition, winning five of the NAIA's six national championships in the sport, per the Star's reporting.

Gillette said Park's hiring of Lee would make other NAIA institutions feel they had missed out, a confidence bolstered by how quickly the conference is filling out. Rival Missouri Valley College named Dillon Humphreys as its own inaugural head coach in December 2025 and has since assembled a roster topping 20 players ahead of its February 2027 debut, according to KMMO. Missouri Valley plans to play a 12-game conference schedule starting that spring. Culver-Stockton College, meanwhile, announced this month that it will add flag football as its 21st varsity sport in spring 2028, further expanding the conference's footprint, per Culver-Stockton's own athletics department.

College Football's Fast-Growing New Frontier

College women's flag football is played 7-on-7, and NAIA rules allow member schools to award up to 12 full athletic scholarship equivalents per team — an immediate recruiting edge over NCAA programs still building out their infrastructure. NAIA participation nearly doubled in a single year, growing from 19 member institutions in 2025 to 35 in 2026, according to Culver-Stockton College Athletics. The NCAA reported that at least 65 schools were sponsoring women's flag football at either the club or varsity level in 2025, with more slated to join in 2026. According to the NCAA, at least 40 schools planned to sponsor women's flag football at the varsity level as of summer 2025. The NCAA, by contrast, has only classified the sport as an Emerging Sport for Women and aims to sponsor its own championships starting in spring 2028, timed to align with the sport's Olympic debut in Los Angeles.

Park expects strong community support as the Pirates take the field, and Lee has said the program expects to compete in the top half of the Heart of America Conference right away. Lee, who has said sports gave her and her family opportunities, plans to continue public speaking engagements while developing the program. She was interviewed about the launch at Park University in Parkville, according to the Star.

The buildout in Parkville mirrors similar launches taking shape across the country, including at USC Upstate's new program, as colleges nationwide race to capture a talent pool that barely existed on rosters five years ago.