Whenever women attempt to play sports with men, the same talking points always seem to pop up. “She’ll be a distraction to the team.” “Girls aren’t physically able to play against boys.” “She should be more interested in sports for girls.”
Kelly Kash doesn’t care what anyone has to say about her role on the school’s football team. In fact, she enjoys pushing the envelope.
Kash, a two-sport athlete at Durant High School, has played her way into the team’s starting kicker job and doesn’t plan on giving it up anytime soon. It’s a goal she said she’d spent four years chasing.
“I like to push limits on everything,” she said.
The Alabama native moved to Florida during the last school year and decided to do whatever she could to get on the football field. Head coach Mike Gottman saw her kicking one day and approached her about trying out for the team. Though he believes Durant had never had a female football player in his 15 seasons with the program, it’s not because Gottman didn’t have an open mind about it.
“I said, ‘Here’s the bottom line, we’re gonna play the best person that gives us the best chance to be successful,’” Gottman said.
The catch was that Kash’s parents had to be convinced to let her play. Growing up in such a football-friendly atmosphere, prime Crimson Tide country, Kash knew playing soccer alone wouldn’t be enough for her. Though she still plays the sport and hopes to continue doing so in college, Kash said she was drawn to football because it would give her the ability to be more physical than she could be in more traditional girls sports.
Her parents didn’t share her enthusiasm when it came to letting her get on the field and possibly have to make tackles. But Gottman convinced them to let her give football a shot, four years after she started asking for their permission to play the game.
Though she would love to go beyond just kicking in the future, Kash said she’s happy to have made a varsity roster in her first year with the game.
“A lot of sports for girls aren’t contact,” she said. “I grew up with a lot of anger issues and no, like, ‘nice’ way to get them out. I initially wanted to do it so I could hit, but that’s a different story than kicking.”
Kash said after about a month with the program, the rest of the team began to take her seriously and accept her. That began with senior quarterback Carlton Potter, whom she said has constantly pushed her to succeed, and stemmed from there. Gottman called her a “tough” player willing to work and work out as hard as anyone on the roster, and added that her presence has not created any distractions for the team. These days she considers life on the team akin to “having a bunch of annoying brothers” as likely to joke around with her as they are to support her.
Kash got her first game action in the preseason against Blake, which Durant beat by a score of 44-6. Until her number was called in the third quarter, the Cougars couldn’t find any success with post-touchdown scoring conversions. When she got her opportunity, with 3:04 to play in the third quarter following Potter’s 33-yard touchdown pass to Agiye Hall, she went out there and put the ball through the uprights and Durant found itself further ahead on the scoreboard, 31-0.
“It was amazing,” Kash said. “Everything went silent. Whenever I realized I made it the crowd started screaming, they were excited. It was a lot of fun.”
Against Jesuit in the Aug. 25 season opener, Kash made two more PATs in an effort Gottman said was crucial to the Cougars’ ability to hold a lead over the Tampa powerhouse. The starting job has since been hers.
“She’s the one that gives us the best chance to be successful,” Gottman said.
Now Kash’s parents have become her two biggest fans in the bleachers. She’s hoping to improve her leg strength and add some distance, continue improving and spend her remaining season and a half of high school football defying anyone who says women don’t belong in a man’s game.
“If you want to do it, you need to go,” Kash said. “Don’t wuss out about it. If you want it, go get it. And if you want it bad enough, no one’s gonna be able to stop you.”