There was a time when Ashley flag football could win a state championship without officially winning a state championship.
The Screaming Eagles captured North Carolina's first unofficial flag football state title in 2024, then returned to the championship game the next year. The wins counted. The memories counted. The banners could tell the story.
The sport itself, however, wasn't sanctioned by the NCHSAA.
Yet.
That changed this fall, and so far, little else has for Ashley.
Through nine games in North Carolina's inaugural season of sanctioned high school flag football, the Screaming Eagles remain perfect at 9-0. They're one of just a handful of teams statewide to reach that mark through
nine games, sitting No. 1 in the NCHSAA's 7A RPI and No. 4 in MaxPreps' state rankings.
"I think it's really cool that (flag football) is taken seriously," Ashley quarterback Caroline Smist said.
Smist has been at the center of Ashley's scorching start.
The sophmore quarterback has thrown for 1,400 yards and 30 touchdowns while adding another 527 yards and six scores on the ground, directing an offense that averages 33 points per game.
She's also watched flag football evolve firsthand.
Smist has played the sport for years and even crossed over into tackle football for a period, playing on Ashley's junior varsity squad.
Her favorite target has experienced an even more dramatic transformation.
Senior wide receiver Chloe Laverty has scored 17 total touchdowns this fall and ranks among the state's top players. She'll continue playing flag football in college after graduation, an opportunity that hardly existed when she first picked up the sport as a freshman.
"It wasn't really in college my freshman year ... it wasn't really that big of a deal," Laverty said. "Now there's a ton more teams and it's developing into a bigger sport."
Ashley has grown alongside it.
First-year coach Bobby Edmonds took over the program from Dante Lombardi, who now leads North Brunswick's flag football team, after the sport received NCHSAA sanctioning earlier this year.
Edmonds didn't need an introduction to flag football. He's spent more than 30 years playing in adult leagues in North Carolina while coaching tackle football.
For him, sanctioning means more than putting an official label on what Ashley and other programs were already doing.
"It was fun to know that (the girls) will be able to continue (playing flag football), knowing now that it's a college sport; it's going to be an Olympic sport," Edmonds said. "It gives the ladies more of an opportunity to showcase what they can do."
With only a handful of games remaining before the postseason begins Oct. 31, Ashley has a chance to finish its regular-season run against Wilmington competition without a blemish.
But an undefeated record isn't the finish line.
For two years, Ashley played for championships while flag football waited for the recognition its players believed it deserved. Now that recognition is here, and the Screaming Eagles want to be standing in a familiar place when North Carolina crowns its first officially sanctioned champions in November.
"We want to get better; we want to get to states again and have that feeling of being a state champion again,” Laverty said.
This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: Inside Ashley flag football's unbeaten start and chase for another title
