From high school basketball star to flag football world champion
Izzy Geraci's road to the pinnacle of women's football
First half. 1:03 left on the clock. The U.S. Women’s National Flag Football team is up on Mexico 12-0 in the gold medal contest of the 2024 IFAF World Championships in Lahti, Finland. Quarterback Vanita Krouch takes the snap and rolls a bit to her right. She keeps her eyes downfield, finds a receiver and tosses a strike to Isabella “Izzy” Geraci in the back of the endzone. Touchdown. The U.S. National Team holds a a 18-0 lead just before halftime.
“I didn’t realize what happened,” said Geraci about her first score and second catch in the championship game. “I just remember celebrating with my teammates. We had practiced celebrations all week about as much as we practiced football so we had to have a good one.”
The U.S. National Team wouldn’t look back from that 18-0 lead, cruising past Mexico 31-18 to capture the IFAF World Championship. But that’s not where Geraci’s story starts. And it’s not where it ends.
On the shores of Lake Erie in suburban Cleveland, Ohio, football is a way of life. Every weekend, families tune into Ohio State Buckeyes and Cleveland Browns football. The city - and its suburbs - live and breathe football and you can tell the mood of the city based on the team’s success.
As a child, Geraci was no different. She watched all the Buckeyes and Browns games she could. And she wanted to get onto the field. So she did, signing up for flag football in North Ridgeville at seven. She immediately fell in love with the sport and stuck to it, playing throughout her elementary school days before joining her middle school’s team. She was the only girl to play, but that didn’t stop her from enjoying the experience.
“There was no disconnect between me and everyone else on the team,” Geraci said for her middle-school football days. “The only thing that was different was that I had to change in a different locker room and Coach had to check that everyone was changed before I could come in for the pre-game talk.”
Geraci played as a wide receiver and defensive back those years, but also found an affinity for another sport. One that carries a road more traveled for female athletes: basketball.
And she was good. When high school came around, Geraci hung up her football cleats for a mismatched pair of basketball shoes. She dominated the Lorain County basketball scene, finishing her career as the all-time leading scorer in North Ridgeville history and racking up accolades like they were nothing. Her junior season saw Geraci pull home First Team All-Conference, Second-Team All District and Honorable Mention All-State. As a senior, she dominated from the guard spot, averaging 17.1 points, 8.2 rebounds, 3.8 steals and 2.4 assists. She was named Lorain County Division I Player of the Year, Morning Journal Player of the Year, Lorain County Miss Basketball and Lorain County Athletic Administrators’ Association Student-Athlete of the Year. She had a bright basketball future ahead of her.
She decided to stay close to home, earning a scholarship from Cleveland State to compete in the Horizon League. In her freshman season, Geraci played in 25 games with two starts against Toledo and Marshall. She played consistently across all four years with the Vikings, appearing in 108 games total and clocking over 1,200 minutes.
Even when she was on the court, Geraci still felt a pull for football. She described the sport as a happy place of sorts to fall into when she felt down. And that became more constant as she “fell out of love” with basketball towards the end of her Cleveland State career.
Armed with another season of eligibility from the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, Geraci decided that a change of scenery was in order and transferred to the University of South Carolina-Upstate. There, in Spartanburg, South Carolina, Geraci found the enjoyment in basketball again. And it showed on the court, where the graduate transfer guard started all 31 of the Spartans’ games in 2023 and led the team with 207 rebounds and 57 steals. She was named Female Newcomer of the Year after the standout 2023 season.
Even with all the success on the court, Geraci still didn’t feel satisfied. Something was missing.
After her college basketball career came to a close, Geraci needed something new to do to stay active. Sure, she could keep playing basketball, but she wanted something different. Since her time at Cleveland State, Geraci had been looking into how to play football competitively. She had come across some women’s tackle football leagues, and Cleveland had a team, which intrigued her. But then she moved to Spartanburg during the transfer to USC-Upstate and that went out the window.
So Geraci kept looking. Ultimately, she found the fit in flag football. Looking to learn more about how to get into the sport, she reached out to future U.S. National Team teammate Madison Fulford, who connected Geraci with some local tournaments and leagues.
Geraci showed up and shined immediately. Within a few short months, Geraci earned a spot on the O.B.B. tournament teams, which rank fourth in the 5v5 Non-Contact Women’s PRO Division and first in the 7v7 Screen Women’s PRO Division. The game was on, and Geraci found her home alongside Fulford and another future National Team member in Ashley Edwards.
As the O.B.B. team continued to grab win after win, their members started gaining the attention of U.S. National Team scouts. Even though Geraci had less than a year of competitive flag football under her belt, she was getting serious looks for the IFAF World Championship team. It was time to put the pedal to the metal.
Geraci kicked her training into overdrive, thriving in a “me vs. me” mentality where she continuously tried to top her own bests. She soaked in all the various rules and strategies that make competitive 5v5 flag football different from the traditional 11-on-11 we see on Saturdays and Sundays. She sent in tapes of herself for a digital combine doing 20-yard dashes, broad jumps and more.
Then, it all came to a head in the 2023 Tampa World Championship. Geraci’s O.B.B. team came into the world’s biggest club flag football tournament and played well. Their O.B.B. team left with some hardware, winning the 5v5 Women’s Non-Contact and 7v7 Women’s Screen formats, but Geraci and a few of her teammates got an even bigger prize after the tournament - an invite to the U.S. National Team Trials in February.
Just one month later, Geraci, Fulford and Edwards were back on the field battling to claim one of 12 spots on the team heading to the IFAF World Championships in Finland. Trials were incredibly competitive as the best players in the nation competed for limited spots.
“I wouldn’t say that I had any nerves,” said Geraci. “I trusted my work ethic would be good enough and that I had enough talent to get on the team. It was really a ‘me vs. myself’ thing more than worrying about the other girls trying out.”
She was right and earned a spot on the team in early March. “It all happened so fast,” Geraci said between laughs.
Just a few months later, with only three three-day training camp sessions under their belts, Geraci and the rest of the U.S. National Flag Football Team departed for a long flight to Lahti. When they landed, they were ushered to a Finnish Olympic training site where all the competitors would be housed.
“It was a 10-out-of-10 experience,” Geraci said of the trip. “It was perfect weather. They had us in a ‘baby Olympic Village’ with all the other athletes, which was a really cool experience.”
At the “Baby Olympic Village,” Geraci, her teammates and the coaching staff were able to grow together. Their training camp sessions were spread out across the summer, but now it was just football all the time. Sure, they practiced their celebrations a ton, but their mind was on football the entire time.
Coming in as the heavy favorite in a sport invented in America, with the preeminent league formed just one hour south of Geraci’s hometown in Canton, Ohio, the team had to stay focused on the prize. That wasn’t hard. Geraci kept going back to two mantras the team had throughout the time in Finland: the “Gold Standard” that they had to represent the United States well, and a “us vs. us” mentality that they were only going to beat themselves.
“You only hear about it when a national team loses,” Geraci pointed out. “We knew what the standard was. We knew what we needed to do. We had to win gold.”
Between wins, the U.S. Women’s National Team continued to work hard. Everyone on the team, according to Geraci, had the same tenacious work ethic. As they ran through teams like France, Australia, Sweden and others, the team continued to keep their eyes on the prize. Wins kept stacking up, but they didn’t relent.
Even after a 18-14 scare against Spain in the quarter-finals, the U.S. National Team didn’t rest. They kept at it. Austria proved no challenge in the semi-finals and then it was the Championship Game against Mexico.
Geraci’s touchdown was as close of a dagger as you’d see, landing a three-score lead before the half. She may have blocked the environment out and entered the zone all elite athletes have on the field, but as the game progressed, it started to set in.
“I definitely started noticing it as the game went on,” Geraci said. “As it kept going, it really started to set in. We were going to win it all. It was a crazy feeling.”
Win it all they did. By the final score of 31-18, the U.S. Women’s National Flag Football Team captured the 2024 IFAF Women’s World Championship Crown for the third straight tournament. Izzy Geraci is a world champion.
But that’s not where this story ends. In fact, it’s not where either Geraci’s or flag football’s story ends.
For the sport she loves, Geraci had a lot of optimism for the future. She pointed to the rapid growth in the sport as a reason to be excited, especially with flag football added as a sport for the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, California.
But the Olympics wasn’t the thing Geraci was excited most about. That was the growth of the sport for children.
“I think it’s a great opportunity to get girls involved in the sport, especially if they’re not interested in playing tackle football,” Geraci told me. “You’re seeing it start to pop up a lot in high schools, and with more media coverage like what we got from the NFL and USA Football, it’s really going to start growing and give a ton of kids more opportunities to play the game.”
Right now, MaxPreps lists 13 states as having high school girls’ flag football teams. As the sport continues to grow and more concerns are raised about player safety, especially at younger ages, I expect that number to continue to grow.
She also went back to her basketball world for another comparison. “[I think] we’ll also see more people start to watch the sport when they realize there’s a ton of great athletes in women’s flag,” she said. “It’s like what you see with women’s basketball where Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese draw a bunch of people in. The talent’s always been there. The athletes have always been there. We just need to do more to get more people watching the sport.”
As for Geraci, her story is long from finished. She’s back to the grindstone, working on her craft. She told me she hadn’t played much of anything or trained much at all since returning from Finland, but left our interview to head to a local flag football tournament.
“I’ll probably get humbled,” she joked, “but I’m happy to get back out there.”
She didn’t commit to anything for the future, but one thing’s clear. Her love for football isn’t going anywhere. And neither is her competitive spirit. She may have one IFAF World Championship under her belt, but I don’t think that’s going to be it for her. And as women’s flag football grows more and more popular, that’s not it for this iteration of the U.S. Women’s National Flag Football Team. But there’s one thing they can hang their hats on for now. They’re World Champions.
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Cool story! Nice work.
This is such a cool roadmap for Izzy’s career so far, great story!