I went out to the Antioch Redskins’ field on Saturday to catch some of the Turkey Creek Trojans’ home opener action — particularly, the Midgets’ game against the Wesley Chapel Cowboys.
The score was 6-0, in favor of the Cowboys, at halftime, and the Trojan coaches were attempting to fire up the boys with a motivational speech. What really got their attention, though, was a casual observation.
“They’ve got a girl out there,” one Turkey Creek staffer said to another. “Two girls, actually.”
“You’re kidding,” the other said.
“Nope. Two girls. Look at No. 88, you can see her hair coming out of her helmet.”
Sure enough, I looked through my photos and saw it. I thought it was pretty cool. Then, the word passed over to the coaches.
“Hey, they’ve got TWO girls out there,” one coach said to the players, some of whom shot quick glances at each other. “Y’all wanna get beat by some girls today?”
Unfortunately, Turkey Creek did lose that game — a 12-0 loss, sealed by a Wesley Chapel touchdown with less than a minute left to play. Technically, they did get beaten by a couple of girls.
There’s no shame in that, though.
We, as a society, are just naturally weirded out by the prospect of girls playing football because it’s such a rugged sport. It’s also the only one where women don’t seem to have a way to play and take it somewhere, the way that they do on the college, professional and Olympic levels with America’s other three Big Four sports.
Unless, of course, you count the Lingerie Football League as a serious profession, on the same level (so, probably not).
It’s not totally unprecedented, even in Florida. Just two years ago, out on the East Coast, South Plantation High School’s third-string quarterback was making national news for being the first girl to ever play quarterback at a Florida high school. Erin DiMeglio, then a senior, got some playing time and earned a $20,000 college scholarship from Foot Locker at the end of the year. She planned to use at the University of Central Florida.
She may not have been able to see much time as a quarterback beyond the high school level, standing at 5-foot-6, but she erased many doubts about a girl’s ability to play high school football in Florida, one of the biggest football hotbeds in the country.
Even at the collegiate level, the ladies are getting closer to breaking into the scene. Mo Isom came really close to making the Louisiana State University football team in 2012, which would have made her the sport’s first-ever female player. She had the leg to do it but, as head coach Les Miles told Yahoo! Sports, “It’s one of those spots you really can’t put a person that cannot tackle.”
Never mind the fact that plenty of college and NFL kickers can’t tackle, either. If they could all tackle well, then maybe Auburn wouldn’t have won last year’s Iron Bowl en route to the BCS National Championship Game.
Slowly but surely, I believe we’re heading in a direction that will see more girls take up the sport of football from a young age and play with the boys. Maybe it won’t be long before the phrase “you got beat by a girl” becomes a relic of the past.