Rob Currin: Head Coach for Geneseo’s new NCAA Flag Football Team
In the fall of 2024, Geneseo officially announced the addition of their twenty-second varsity sport: Women’s Flag Football. Since the announcement in September, Geneseo has hired head coach Rob Currin to lead the university in establishing a new program. Currin, a high school English teacher at LeRoy Central School District and long-time coach of football and basketball, is a flag football enthusiast working hard to establish the collegiate women’s team here at Geneseo.
Beyond his experience building a flag program from scratch, Currin brings a strong network, which he has established through coaching and player safety clinics across the country. His work with USA Football began in 2014 with his collaboration with the Bills to create high school flag programs across the state. He, moreover, has a notable passion for coaching and flag football. Currin expressed in an interview, “For years, I had said if there was an opportunity to coach, that's what I would do,” so when Geneseo’s Athletic Department approached Currin with an opportunity to take on the head coaching position, he committed.
Flag football is still a very new sport by all official standards, even sporting a recent announcement of its inclusion in the 2028 Olympic games. With the sponsorship and support of NFL teams such as the Buffalo Bills and the New York Jets, New York State hosted its inaugural high school flag football season in 2022 with 51 participating teams. As of the 2024 season, 185 teams competed state-wide, including LeRoy’s varsity squad under Currin’s coaching.
The current collegiate league is even more novel and modest, with only eight official teams in New York and less than 30 across the country. As the eighth NCAA team in New York’s first collegiate conference for the sport, Geneseo is committed to being at the forefront of this flag football frontier. In a mirrored sentiment, Currin expressed sheer excitement at this “opportunity to be the trendsetter” for women’s flag football.
When asked about the speed at which the varsity program is coming to fruition, Currin commented that the University is “not dipping a toe into this water…it's a full-blown cannonball into the deep end of this whole endeavor, which is exciting because when other schools are kind of tiptoeing around,” Geneseo is committing to a Varsity program from the beginning, and this will serve as a huge advantage for the program.
Currin went on to say that “the immediate all-in approach that they've taken is what is attracting student-athletes.” At the time of the interview, Currin admitted that he’s had “emails every other day from prospective student-athletes in high schools” from all over the country, including Illinois and California. Due to Geneseo being one of eight NYS colleges with a Varsity program going into the 2025 year, high school athletes nationwide are identifying SUNY Geneseo as a competitive choice for their athletic and academic careers.
As for this Spring's inaugural season, Currin will take on a roster of 15-20 female athletes. Because this is still a new and growing sport at the high school level, this season’s team will have “this mix of no flag experience, but collegiate sports experience” and “some flag experience.” Currin expects that by the fall season, about 50 percent of the rostered athletes will have had flag football experience in high school, and many of the rest will be veterans from the pilot season.
This inaugural season will include tournaments and games with “Cortland, Brockport, College of Staten Island, and Villa Maria,” with pending games with the University of Buffalo and Elmira.
Athletes across New York State and the country will be watching this pilot season closely. Currin himself remarks that he is “excited to be walking into this new space with a group of confident, responsible, intelligent people” because “that's been the billing of what Geneseo students and student-athletes are going to be like.”