Flag Football Coach Chris Raggard Excited about being a Sports Pioneer at Lindsey Wilson College

flag football COLUMBIA, Ky. – Chris Raggard gets to be a sports pioneer for the second time.

The Kentucky native is returning home in 2025 to start a flag football program at Lindsey Wilson College, where it will be the college’s 21st varsity sport when it debuts in February 2026.

And Raggard says he is excited about bringing the action-packed, wide-open sport to Lindsey Wilson’s Parnell Family Stadium. The sport, which has about two dozen teams competing in the NAIA, runs in the spring from February through May.

“It is pretty exciting to be starting a college program, and it’s also nerve-wracking at the same time, but I’ve done it before and it is a lot of fun,” said Raggard, who started the girls flag football program at Pace (Florida) High School in northwest Florida. “Lindsey Wilson is a great place for a flag football program because it has such a strong leadership and athletic tradition, as well as phenomenal facilities and excellent academic programs. It has everything a student could want – the school kind of sells itself. Everybody that I have met there is so nice and so genuine.”

A flag football founder

Raggard, who was born in the Pleasure Ridge Park area of Louisville, has spent most of his life in Florida. He and his wife, Katie, have two sons: Charley, 7; and newborn James, who was born last fall.

Raggard has been around athletics “all my life,” so when he was asked in 2018 by Pace High School’s leadership to start girls varsity flag football, he embraced the opportunity.

“I didn’t know a lot about the sport at first, so I took what I knew from my years of being involved with sports, and then as I learned more about the game and picked up on things about it I made adjustments to how I approached the game,” said Raggard.

Raggard proved to be a quick student of the sport as his Pace Patriots teams never recorded a losing record in six seasons of competition.

Raggard’s teams won two district titles and a region championship. His 2024 team advanced to Florida's Class 2A state semifinals before losing to eventual state champions Palmetto High School. Raggard’s Patriots held the high-scoring Panthers to their lowest point total of the season.

Raggard has also earned several accolades in his coaching career. He was three-time Pensacola News Journal Coach of the Year, and he was named a finalist for the Florida Dairy Farmers Coach of the Year in 2024. Five of Raggard’s players were named to the first-team all-state team, eight received second-team honors and 12 received an honorable mention.

Building another program

Raggard knows it will take time and patience to build a competitive collegiate flag football program, but if the past is any guide, Blue Raider fans should expect to see a hard-working team starting with the program’s inaugural game in February 2026.

“In our very first game at Pace, which we lost 14-0, the other team’s coach came up to me after the game and said, ‘Man, we didn’t expect you all to be this tough and competitive at the beginning.’ And we were like, ‘Well, why would we just show up and not be prepared?’” said Raggard. “So that was our biggest thing – always be prepared, no matter what, and always be competitive on the field.”

Women’s flag football plays on a narrower and shorter field. Including 10-yard end zones, the field is 100 yards long, which is divided into four, 20-yard quadrants. A team has four downs to advance the ball into the next quadrant – which means that after reaching a first down, a player might down a ball near the end of quadrant rather than be downed in the middle of the next one.

Teams play with seven players, many of whom play both offense and defense. The quarterback is the key player on offense. But because all players are eligible to receive a pass, the center also plays an important role.

Although flag football is not a sanctioned high school sport in Kentucky, it is growing in popularity with about a dozen schools fielding teams. In November, Assumption High School beat Central High School in the Louisville-area high school flag football championship game. Since being named Lindsey Wilson coach, Raggard has already received commitments from nearly a half-dozen players. He said he plans to recruit players from Kentucky, but he also aims to attract players from where the sport is sanctioned, such as Alabama, Florida, Georgia and Tennessee.

“We’ll be looking for students who have a lot of athletic ability because most players play on both sides of the ball and every player on offense is an eligible receiver,” said Raggard. “Like I said, Lindsey Wilson has such great facilities and it is such a good place to get a college education, the school kind of sells itself, but we’ll make sure they know all about Lindsey Wilson and all that it offers a young person.”