Jenkintown’s Manor College ready to ‘get in on the ground floor’ with two new sports programs

Thanks to a novel idea years in the making, Jenkintown’s Manor College is set to add two more sports to its portfolio.

Earlier this month, the school announced its intent to add men’s volleyball and women’s flag football to its athletic programs. The latter is an NCAA emerging sport that continues to grow in popularity, one that recently received validation from an NCAA-sanctioned conference recognizing women’s flag football as a varsity sport.

Manor, which will begin play in 2026, becomes one of six area colleges that will field women’s flag football teams alongside Eastern, Holy Family, Immaculata, Neumann, and Chestnut Hill, who will join the Atlantic East Conference — the first conference to recognize women’s flag as an NCAA sport.

In Manor’s case, women’s flag football would start as an independent, as its athletic programs are not a part of the NCAA but are affiliated with the United States Collegiate Athletic Association (USCAA).

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John Dempster, the athletic director at Manor, said the timing of adding both sports, specifically flag football, made sense to offer more students an outlet and an opportunity to play college athletics.

“We’re excited,” Dempster said. “This is an opportunity for us to be on the ground floor of a sport that’s only going to rise in popularity, and we want to be in the conversation in these early stages of NCAA sanctioning. Women’s flag football is a perfect offering for us and allows us to draw a lot of interest from local student athletes who otherwise wouldn’t have an opportunity.

According to Manor athletic officials, since its announcement, there has been interest from a number of former high school players looking to continue their education and play flag football at the collegiate level.

“Girls I played with in high school were familiar with football, and it made them want to come out and play,” said Manor sophomore Tori Simmons, who’s on the women’s basketball team at Manor and played wide receiver at Cheltenham High on the girls’ flag football team. “There’s a strong community you gain from playing football. I’m excited to play again at Manor.”

For Simmons and others, things are moving quickly as Manor is set to announce a coach for the team in a few weeks.

“We already have students committed to playing, are practicing, and have signed up to play when we launch our season in 2026,” Dempster said. “It’s something that we hoped would take off. Seeing so many students already interested in playing proves that adding women’s flag was the right decision.”

According to the NFL Flag website, there are 65 schools across all three divisions of the NCAA and the NAIA that offer flag football at the club or varsity level, with more, like Manor, expected to join in 2026. The NCAA is reviewing adding flag football officially as a championship sport as part of the Emerging Sports for Women initiative, one that helped push the sport into the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles.

“A sport like [flag football] doesn’t just offer a place to play, but also an opportunity for growth,” Dempster said. “We see both [women’s flag football and men’s volleyball] as sports that offer a sustainable way to make Manor an attractive destination. It comes at a low cost for us in terms of keeping the program sustainable and offers an immeasurable amount of growth potential.”

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There’s nothing new about men’s volleyball on Manor’s campus.

Inside its gymnasium, a group has been coming together to play volleyball for more than five years. Men’s volleyball formed into a club sport just a few years ago with a group that started off with just nine people, according to Dempster, but has blossomed into another opportunity for growth.

“It’s clear our men’s volleyball program is more than just a club,” Dempster said. “It’s gaining popularity, and we hope that with us looking to offer it as an NCAA sport, we’ll get more athletes interested in joining what’s already been started.”

Many of Manor’s athletic programs compete in a conference governed by the USCAA. However, the USCAA does not offer men’s volleyball, making Manor look to join the more than 200 schools ranging from NCAA Divisions I-III, NAIA, and junior colleges that offer the sport.

There are more than a dozen schools in the Greater Philadelphia region that offer the program, with Division III schools Arcadia in Glenside, Eastern in St. Davids, and Immaculata in Malvern as neighboring programs. Bryn Athyn College also hosted men’s volleyball, but the school announced the dissolution of all of its athletic programming earlier this year.

Dempster believes that Manor being next up can only bode well.

“We’ve seen that dedication of our club team as the push to see what more we could do for this program,” he said. “I’m happy for the students who helped pioneer what our volleyball program has become, and I’m excited to see what it will be when we kick-start the program as an NCAA sport in [2026].”

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