Women’s flag football comes to Tigerville as NGU announces new program
Ian Johnson, Sports Editor
Photo Courtesy of NGU Athletics
On May 26, the North Greenville University athletic department announced that the school would add women’s flag football to its athletic programs. Around 2 months later, Joe Benson was announced to lead the new program. The team will play its inaugural season in the spring of 2028.
As early as 2023, Conference Carolinas discussed the potential of adding women’s flag football to the conference. A year later, on July 2, the conference would announce the addition of the sport, with its inaugural season coming in spring 2026.
Will Lowery, athletic director at NGU, talked about how during that first season, he was able to visit tournaments and watch how they operated in order to “evaluate whether or not [flag football] was something we could pull off.”
To start a new program, there are several hurdles that Lowery had to work through.
“The obvious hurdle in a private Christian college is always money and resources,” Lowery said. He continued by explaining the various things that needed to be considered before deciding to start a new program. This included questions such as where to play and whether we have a scoreboard. These were all discussed before proposing the plan to the executive vice president and chief financial officer.
On May 26, 2026, NGU announced the women’s flag football program. As they announced the beginning of the program, the search for a head coach began. Lowery emphasized the importance of finding a coach who fit the mission of the athletic department.
“My vision that I have sold to our coaches is that we want to be the standard for how Christian institutions compete and win championships,” said Lowery.
Over the following couple of months, several people applied, and many people were interested in the position. One of the people interested in the position was current NGU staff member Joe Benson, who is the associate director of enrollment operations.
Benson recalls the first time he heard of the opportunity was in an athletic meeting. In that meeting, he stated that once Lowery mentioned the job opening, “I told him I was interested in that moment.” Benson continued, saying, “the idea of building a team and starting something from scratch is exciting.”
After interviewing multiple candidates, NGU announced on July 23 the hiring of Joe Benson as the first head coach of the women’s flag football program.
Benson, a native of upstate South Carolina, grew up boxing and didn’t play any team sports. He spent over two decades with the military and specifically spent almost a decade as a Senior Army Instructor. It wasn’t until his kids began playing youth sports that he began coaching team sports. Over the years, he has coached high school softball and soccer. As a coach of the women’s soccer team at Clinton High School, he was tasked with starting the program from scratch. In his five seasons as head coach, he led the program to the state playoffs each year.
With flag football being a growing and relatively new sport, Benson takes the “kitchen table approach” when it comes to recruiting players. He emphasized this approach, saying, “[To recruit] for the first season, the first year of the first group of players, it’s got to be very deliberate.”
Benson was able to hold an ID camp on July 31. He talked about the camp, saying, “There was some real talent on board. I’ve offered 2-3 girls who showed up already from that camp.”
Though the team won’t play for over a year, Benson is already establishing a team culture. He prioritized having a team that focuses on the three C’s: character, commitment and confidence.
