Women's tackle football gives female athletes opportunities in a game dominated by men
Other banged-up athletes stood or sat on benches behind each sideline, ailing from a torn calf and a torn knee ligament, unable to play in a game watched by about 100 fans cheering for the home team and 11 people backing the visiting squad from Canada.
While the action and the setting was not unusual, the gender of the players did stand out.
'We do it all just like the boys,' Detroit Prowl punter Kelly Bernadyn said. 'But we're women.'
Women have been playing tackle football for decades, mostly under the radar, but two league commissioners believe it will be part of the next wave as interest in women's sports grows.
When Detroit beat the MIFA All-Stars of Ontario in an American Women's Football League game at Allen Park High School, daughters, sisters, mothers and grandmothers experienced the joy of big plays and camaraderie along with the pain of inevitable injuries.
After a postgame handshake line along the 50-yard line, the black-clad Prowl and the visitors in pink gathered on the visitors' sideline to celebrate their sisterhood and shared goal of growing the sport.
'You just begin to love these girls around you,' said MIFA All-Stars quarterback Rachel Vesz, who is from Toronto and played rugby at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. 'And, you all support each other.'
Walking wounded
Despite the inherent risk of injuries in football, women are choosing to join pay-for-play leagues for the love of the game and to inspire young girls to play a game traditionally limited to men.
'I use my own health insurance when I am injured, same with all of my other teammates,' said Bernadyn, who works as an EMT and fitness instructor. 'But at the end of the day, it's worth every dollar I've paid.
'It's worth every ice pack I've needed to use, every day of rest, every cast, every boot, because I know that I'll be able to line up on that football field again.'
Playing for championships
The Prowl lost their bid for a second straight AWFL title with a first-round loss in the 14-team playoffs that wrap up with the league's second championship game July 12 at West Charlotte High School in North Carolina, streaming on BAWLLR TV. The AWFL has 18 teams from eight states and Canada.
Two leagues, meanwhile, have raised their profile enough to have women competing for championships on ESPN2 in high-end venues.
The Women's National Football Conference will have its title game on the network for the first time on Saturday. The Washington Prodigy will face the Texas Elite Spartans in Frisco, Texas, at the Dallas Cowboys' Ford Center, which has about 12,000 seats.
'When someone sees the WNFC for the first time, it opens up the possibilities,' said Odessa Jenkins, founder of the WNFC. 'It's like, 'What a minute. Women play tackle football?' There's no greater joy than to open up new possibilities for yourself and others.'
The WNFC does not pay salaries, but does plan to give a total of $20,000 to the players on the championship team and did budget to pay weekly and season award winners thanks in part to financial support from Adidas, Dove and Riddell. The Women's Football Alliance does not pay players either, but some of their costs are covered by sponsors such as Wilson, ticket sales and licensing rights.
The WFA will be back on the network for its championship game on July 26 at Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium in Canton, Ohio, where MVP jerseys from previous title games are on display.
'This new contract with ESPN is a testament to the high level of football played on the field contributing to the growing popularity of our league on a national and international level,' WFA Commissioner Lisa King said.
Two better than one?
Former WFA players include Katie Sowers, who became the first woman to coach in the Super Bowl as an offensive assistant in San Francisco, and Jennifer King, who was the first Black female full-time coach in the NFL in 2021 when she was Washington's assistant running backs coach.
Jennifer King, who is on the WNFC advisory board, hopes the sport's top two leagues find a way forward together.
'When you have two champions, you want to know who's the best,' she said. 'It would be great to have one Super League, but it would be really hard to do because both of the leagues are far down the road.'
Sowers agrees.
'A big issues is, everyone has an idea of who can do it best,' she said. 'We need to come together and create one powerhouse league that has more resources.'
Flag on the field
The NFL is investing a lot in flag football, which will be an Olympic sport in 2028. The league did give women's tackle football a platform at halftime of the Pro Bowl in 2020, when 22 players from the Utah Girls Football League were featured in a scrimmage.
Former NFL offensive tackle Roman Oben, the league's vice president of football development, applauded the commitment women are making to play tackle football.
'It's been really commendable to see the growth of the sport,' Oben said. 'There isn't a formal partnership with the NFL, but there have been discussions with a few of the leagues. We're aware these women are paying to play for pads, insurance, equipment and travel and they should be applauded.'
Flag football, Jenkins said, will ultimately have the same effect on women's tackle football as Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese have had on the WNBA and the sport will benefit from the increased interest in girls and women playing basketball, soccer, softball, volleyball and more.
'Flag football is putting the ball in the hands of more girls and women than ever and it's going to create the greatest pipeline in the history of the sport,' Jenkins said. 'Women have been playing tackle football for 60 years, but now we have brands everyone knows stepping up to alleviate some of the financial pressure on our players and that's what it is going to take to move it past a club level.'
___
Follow Larry Lage on X
___
AP sports: https://apnews.com/hub/sports
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Fox Sports
3 hours ago
- Fox Sports
Mature, Focused, Humble: Michigan's Bryce Underwood Isn't Your Average 17-Year-Old
LAS VEGAS — A little more than two months ago, as Michigan embarked on its summer break following the completion of spring practice, some of the Wolverines got together to play pickup basketball, one of their favorite group activities away from the football field. But when veteran edge rusher Derrick Moore arrived at the court, he quickly noticed the presence of someone who shouldn't have been in attendance: freshman quarterback Bryce Underwood, the five-star phenom whose commitment to Michigan last November transformed him into an NIL multi-millionaire long before his 18th birthday, which is still a few weeks away. "What are you doing here?" Derrick Moore asked. "You're not supposed to be here." The chilly reaction had nothing to do with what he thinks of Underwood as a person. Like so many of his other teammates and coaches, Derrick Moore is now a wholehearted believer in the teenage prodigy after observing how Underwood, the No. 1 overall recruit in the country, has carried himself since flipping his commitment from LSU to Michigan last November and enrolling over the winter. Underwood joined the Wolverines in time for their bowl prep against Alabama and then took plenty of reps during spring ball amid a quarterback room thinned by injuries and transfers alike. All signs now point toward him being the team's starter once the regular season arrives. Instead, Derrick Moore's objection to Underwood playing basketball on that summer day was purely economic, even if he originally rolled his eyes a bit at the monetary figures attached to Underwood's recruitment. One spring was all it took for Moore to deem it unwise of the program's most valuable asset — a player who reportedly inked a market-resetting NIL deal worth between $10 million and $12.5 million over four years — to risk injury during a meaningless social activity. Especially after defensive coordinator Don "Wink" Martindale spent the spring yelling at his players to "stay away from Bryce, don't touch Bryce at all!" in acknowledgment of how vital Underwood's health really is. "I feel like we do a good job protecting him and also giving him good advice," Derrick Moore said while representing the Wolverines at Big Ten Media Days. "He's worth a lot, so we've got to make sure he knows. I feel like he already knows, but I feel like we've got to do a good job of reminding him that he can't do too much. And if you do play basketball, no jumping, no jumping at all." Underwood, of course, was nowhere to be found in the South Seas Ballroom at Mandalay Bay, where the Wolverines' contingent of Derrick Moore, fullback/tight end Max Bredeson, inside linebacker Ernest Hausmann and second-year head coach Sherrone Moore were responsible for telling wave after wave of reporters about the program's shiniest new toy. It would have been thoroughly un-Michigan-like for Moore to bring Underwood to this week's event, the league's unofficial kickoff party for the 2025 campaign, though Colorado head coach Deion Sanders brought his true freshman quarterback, Julian Lewis, to Big 12 Media Days earlier this month. The Wolverines are digging in their heels to slow the Underwood hype train from picking up too much speed, but everyone around the program — let alone fans outside it — can sense the cars beginning to careen off the track. In a last-ditch effort to fortify himself against the barrage he surely knew was coming, Moore responded to the first question about Underwood by reminding the media that Michigan has yet to name a starting quarterback, that the competition is wide open entering fall camp, that Fresno State transfer Mikey Keene and East Carolina transfer Jake Garcia and former four-star prospect Jadyn Davis will all have chances to stake their claim between now and the season opener against New Mexico on Aug. 30. "There is no starter," Moore said. But that didn't stop reporters from asking Moore about whether the extra reps Underwood took during the spring, when Keene was recovering from an undisclosed injury and Garcia had not yet joined the program, accelerated the timeline for when he will be ready to play. Or about how Underwood has embraced the possibility — inevitability — of starting for Michigan, the winningest program in college football history, as a true freshman. Or about why the Wolverines won't just declare Underwood the starter given the extreme financial commitment they've made to him. All those questions came in the first third of Moore's allotted media time. "His job is to just go be the best teammate, best football player he can be," Moore said. "And whoever that person is, it's going to take a village. And for us to be a successful program, to be a successful football team, we have to do a great job surrounding that person with weapons on the football field [and] the weapons mentally to be successful." Still, there was a fascinating juxtaposition on Thursday between the way Moore and Michigan's upperclassmen spoke compassionately, almost tenderly, about Underwood's numerical age — he'll finally turn 18 next month — and the slack-jawed reverence with which they described his maturity as an athlete, likening his habits and disposition to those of seasoned veterans. On one side of the room was Bredeson, a fifth-year senior and one of the program's longest-tenured players, telling reporters that he takes "a little bit of pride and responsibility in being like the older guy who can kind of calm college football down for him," while also admitting that nobody else in Michigan's locker room can understand the life that Underwood currently leads, from the sheer attention generated by his every move to the opportunities that land at his feet. On the other side of the room was Derrick Moore, a former blue-chip recruit in his own right, expressing genuine awe about how someone so young can display such unwavering focus and concentration, traits Moore said he never came close to matching at that age. Underwood, who grew up a half hour from Michigan's campus, has already developed a reputation for being one of the first to arrive at Schembechler Hall each morning and one of the last to leave each night, a classic football cliché bestowed upon a team's hardest workers. He's known for taking the field alone 20 minutes prior to every session, headphones wrapped around his ears, to study that day's practice script and visualize the drills in his mind. He builds chemistry with the wide receivers and tight ends via extra throwing sessions that often run until the wee hours of the morning. He competes maniacally in the weight room and has packed enough muscle onto his 6-foot-4 frame to reach 230 pounds. He accepts constructive criticism from anyone in the building and carries out menial tasks without a hint of rebuttal. "He's not no average 17-year-old," Derrick Moore said. "With a lot of money that's coming in, he's pretty humble. If he does anything wrong, he takes full accountability for it. You don't really hear too much trouble out of him, you know? He does everything like a pro." Even if that means sitting out of pickup basketball. Michael Cohen covers college football and college basketball for FOX Sports. Follow him at @Michael_Cohen13. Want great stories delivered right to your inbox? Create or log in to your FOX Sports account , and follow leagues, teams and players to receive a personalized newsletter daily! FOLLOW Follow your favorites to personalize your FOX Sports experience College Football recommended Item 1 of 3 Get more from the College Football Follow your favorites to get information about games, news and more
USA Today
10 hours ago
- USA Today
MSU OL Stanton Ramil on expectations this season: 'We want to see couches burned'
Burning couches at Michigan State typically means a big win has occurred, and that's exactly what Stanton Ramil is shooting for in 2025 "We want to see couches burned, that's what we want." It's a simple message that Spartans everywhere will understand when offensive lineman Stanton Ramil was asked about he wants to see Michigan State prove this season. Ramil was one of three Michigan State players on hand for Big Ten Football Media Days on Thursday, and he made a very blunt statement on expectations for this upcoming season. He wants Michigan State football to experience enough success on the field that would invoke fans to burn couches in celebration. That's maybe not the way I personally would have put it, but as a Michigan State alum I completely understand what he is stating. Here's the full quote from Ramil -- courtesy of On3's Kenny Jordan: Here's an abbreviated clip of the comment from Ramil as well: For those not aware of the history and connection to burning couches at Michigan State, this illegal "tradition" typically occurs after a major Spartans victory in either football or basketball. The last time I can recall a notable event of couch burning occurred at Michigan State was in 2021 when the Spartans beat rival Michigan in a top 10 battle. So while I myself don't condone couch burning -- because, again, it is illegal to do so -- I love the mindset from Ramil in stating he wants to give fans something special to celebrate this fall. Could that be the Spartans beating rival Michigan in October for the first time since 2021? Could that be something more than that? Hopefully, Michigan State is able to achieve enough success this upcoming season that'll meet Ramil's expectations and goal -- just maybe this time we spare turning furniture into ashes in our celebration should this monumental win(s) come this fall. Contact/Follow us @The SpartansWire on X (formerly Twitter) and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Michigan State news, notes and opinion. You can also follow Robert Bondy on X @RobertBondy5.
USA Today
11 hours ago
- USA Today
'A freak athlete,' Ernest Hausmann hypes Jaishawn Barham for Michigan football in 2025
While the hype train for Michigan football surrounds around either Bryce Underwood or the defensive line, there's more than enough optimism emanating from Schembechler Hall about the linebacking corps. We've already seen solid play over the course of two seasons by Ernest Hausmann, who started his career at Nebraska before coming to Ann Arbor. But so much hype surrounded Maryland transfer Jaishawn Barham last year, though the expectations did not match the on-field results for about two-thirds of the season in 2024. This year promises to be different. Barham started to figure things out in Wink Martindale's defense as the season wore on. And now, Hausmann says, everyone is excited to see what Barham does now that he knows what he's supposed to do and where he's supposed to be. "Jaishawn's a freak athlete. You can see that just looking at him," Hausmann said at Big Ten media days. "You can see how he plays. I think what I really appreciate about playing with Jaishawn is he trusts me. He trusts me to allow to navigate that defense, and he trusts me to communicate to him. And as we've been able to play together more comfortably, our trust has grown. And our comfortability has grown. And I think it's going to be awesome to see what we do in year two together. I'm very excited about it." Barham knows the expectations and what he's capable of. That has not only him salivating, but also his teammates. Despite heightened expectations for him, the linebacking corps, and the whole defense, they're feeling like they've got a chip on their shoulder. Hausmann says that he, Barham, and the rest of the unit are excited about the prospects of improving upon last year and showing the world that it's still the best defense in the country. "It seems like he's so hyped," Hausmann said. "He knows it. Everybody knows -- the whole program. We're just so excited to see what he can do. He has something like that gift, that size, that ability. All we have to do is put him in a position to make plays, and he's going to make that play. "It's not pressure. The thing is about Michigan, there's a standard when we play. It's a foundational principle of how we play defense. And we don't care when or how, when the ball is lined up, no, no, we don't care. If the ball is lined up outside of the center, we're going to play defense. We're going to play how we play defense. So we don't care how it is, what it is. We have a job to do. With the ball at the 30-yard line going in, we have to get a stand. We don't worry about where the ball is at. We worry about what we've got to do this series. We've got to do this play to make sure we execute our job." Fall camp for the Wolverines is set to begin next Wednesday with the season opener slated for August 30 against New Mexico.
