Saturday, August 8, 2015

There's Something Different About This Year's Squad...

See if you can spot the difference in this year's South County Stallions football team:
One of these players is not like the others...
In May, on the heels of her debut in girls' lacrosse, Sarah announced that she wanted to go out for freshman football this year. While you can hardly imagine our surprise, we've been just thrilled to be able to support her making a run at it. So she went to mini-camp in June (picture above), and has been spending time in the weight room with the boys getting ready for the season. And now that it's August, she's been at practice at 6:30am each morning, learning how to play the game she's always enjoyed on TV.

For the present, she's training at cornerback; she likes the idea of being able to put the smack on someone without being the one to wonder when she'll get hit. And she's breaking all sorts of stereotypes. We *think* she's the first girl in the 10-year history of South County HS to play football. And one day after the mini-camp, the varsity head coach came up to her while she was talking with the freshman head coach, and said, "I hear we've found our kicker!" Sarah demurred, saying No, actually, I think Andrew wanted to be kicker. The freshman coach jumped in and said, "Oh, no, she's a DB. She's aggressive!"

I can't tell you how incredibly proud we are of her, for having the courage to break the mold and be the first girl at South County to play football. She's learning a lot--both about the game, and about what it's like for-reals on a football team (i.e., "they're rude," as she observed). But all the more, whether she becomes a starter or, like her brother, scarcely sees action all season, she'll have learned how to live out her convictions. She'll also put the world on notice that you can try to put this Baby in a corner, but she'll just take off your knees for trying.

Here's a video of the no-tackling walk-through the team did this morning, with Sarah at left corner, wearing blue. And here's the link to the 2015 Stallions freshman football schedule…come out and see her make history!

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