American football practiced by women
Women's
gridiron football
, more commonly known as
women's tackle football
,
women's
American football
,
women's
Canadian football
, or simply
women's football
, is a form of gridiron football (American or Canadian) played by women. Most leagues play by similar rules to the men's game. Women primarily play on a
semi-professional
or amateur level in the United States. Very few high schools or colleges offer the sport solely for women and girls. However, on occasion, it is permissible for a female player to join the otherwise male team.
History
[
edit
]
Women and girls were playing tackle football not long after the sport was invented in the 1880s, often in educational settings.
[1]
For over 70 years, however, female involvement in football was reported in the media as a novel "spectacle".
[2]
[3]
According to
The Women's Football Encyclopedia
, during this period, "powder bowl" events were "unusual and nonrecurring, and they were universally treated by the press as more farce than competitive football."
[3]
Early participation
[
edit
]
The first recorded instance of women playing football in the United States was in 1892, when students at the
Philadelphia School of Design for Women
played with "modified tackling rules".
[4]
[5]
Starting in the 1890s, there were also numerous articles alluding to students at women's colleges playing football, at
Wellesley College
in Massachusetts and at
Vassar College
in New York.
[1]
However, sports historian Katie Taylor questions the veracity of these accounts, and suggests that any games that did take place at
Seven Sisters
schools during these years were informal rather than competitive.
[1]
On November 21, 1896, a men's social club in New York set up a scrimmage between two teams of five women each, wearing the colors of
Yale
and
Princeton
, outside the casino at Sulzer's Harlem River Park, as entertainment before a masked ball.
[2]
[6]
The Sun
reported that after only a few plays, the local police captain had to step in to halt the event, after the crowd of men watching the women tackling each other started pushing, and it looked like someone could get crushed.
[6]
[2]
In 1897, the San Francisco Grays played against the Oakland Browns, winning 20 to 8, in a women's football game played at the Velodrome under rugby rules.
[7]
[5]
1920s
[
edit
]
On December 8, 1922,
Maui High School
in the
Territory of Hawaii
held the first of two girls' football games that month with a team of sophomores and seniors playing against a team of juniors and freshman.
[8]
The Maui News
described it as "a game which afforded much amusement to the masculine element", but also noted that "The Hi girls proved that when it comes to grit, they're there with the goods."
[8]
In 1925, a woman's football game played at
San Jose State Teachers' College
between two teams drawn from the school's gymnasium classes was covered by the Associated Press and
The New York Times.
[9]
[5]
On November 6, 1926, the
Frankford Yellow Jackets
of Philadelphia, who went on to win the
NFL championship that year
, featured "Lady Yellow Jackets" as halftime entertainment during their game against the
Chicago Cardinals
, in front of an audience of 8,000.
[3]
[10]
Although the NFL connection has led many to pinpoint this event as the start of women's football,
[11]
a detailed account in the
Philadelphia Public Ledger
makes it clear that it was nothing more than a comedy act.
[3]
[10]
[12]
The eleven Lady Yellow Jackets danced the
Charleston
,
[10]
and the team they faced consisted of two old men.
[3]
[10]
Furthermore, there is no evidence to suggest that this was more than a one-time event, or that other NFL franchises had similar ladies' "teams".
[3]
1930s
[
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]
A few women's football leagues emerged in the 1930s, including one in Ohio in 1934 and another in Los Angeles in 1939, but were short-lived.
[5]
1960s and 1970s
[
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]
The women's game started to formalize in the 1960s, after entrepreneur Sid Friedman founded the
Women's Professional Football League
in 1965.
[5]
Leagues
[
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]
Leagues play
American football
unless otherwise noted.
United States
[
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]
Canada
[
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]
Australia
[
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]
Europe
[
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]
Finland
[
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]
Germany
[
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]
- Damenbundesliga
- 2. Damenbundesliga
- Aufbauliga NRW
Mexico
[
edit
]
- Football Xtremo Femenil
- Asociacion de Football Femenil Equipado
- Liga Mexicana de Football Lingerie
- Pretty Girls Football League
- Liga Iberoamericana de Bikini Football
- Women's Football League
US defunct leagues
[
edit
]
Women in college and professional football
[
edit
]
Of the women who have seen action in men's college and pro football, almost all have been in
special teams
positions that are
protected from physical contact
. The first professional player was a
placekick holder
(a position usually occupied by a person who holds another position on the team), while the best known female college football players were all
placekickers
, with all having primarily played
women's soccer
prior to
converting
.
Patricia Palinkas
is on record as being the first female professional football player, having played for the
Orlando Panthers
of the
Atlantic Coast Football League
in 1970.
[14]
Palinkas was a placekick holder for her placekicker husband.
[15]
On October 18, 1997,
Liz Heaston
became the first woman to play and score in a
college football
game
, kicking two
extra points
.
[16]
Prior to this game, female athletes at
Duke
and
Louisville
had come close to playing in a game but did not.
[17]
In 2001,
Ashley Martin
became the second female athlete to score in a college football
game
, this time in the
NCAA
.
In 2003,
Katie Hnida
became the first woman to score in an NCAA Division I-A game. She accomplished this as placekicker for the
University of New Mexico
Lobos
on August 30, 2003.
[18]
She later became the second professional player, when she signed with the
Fort Wayne FireHawks
.
Julie Harshbarger
, a placekicker for numerous Chicago-based
Continental Indoor Football League
teams, became the first female player to win a
most valuable player
award in an otherwise all-male league in 2014. By kicking five
field goals
that season, she earned the title of special teams player of the year, leading all kickers in the league in scoring; with a career spanning seven seasons, Harshbarger's career was the longest documented of any woman playing in a predominantly men's professional league.
In 2020,
Sarah Fuller
became the first woman to play in a
Power Five
football game when she took the opening kickoff of the second half of the
Vanderbilt Commodores
' game against the
Missouri Tigers
with a 30-yard
squib kick
on November 28, 2020.
[19]
[20]
[21]
The term "Power Five" was not in use when
Katie Hnida
became the first woman to score in an NCAA Division I-A game in 2003; Hnida played at the
Mountain West Conference
, which did not have Automatic Qualifying status in the
Bowl Championship Series
.
[22]
)
Jennifer Welter
became the first female
skill position
player at the male professional level by playing as a running back in the
Texas Revolution
in 2014.
To date, no women have ever played a line position above the high school level.
Holley Mangold
, whose brother
Nick
played several years in the NFL and who herself played as a lineswoman in high school, declined to further pursue football in college, fearing she had no chance to play professionally as a woman; she later went on to become an Olympic weightlifter.
[23]
Brittanee Jacobs is the first female football coach at the collegiate level. She helped coach safeties at
Central Methodist University
during the 2012 season.
[24]
Welter became the first female coach at the professional level when she took a preseason position with the
Arizona Cardinals
in 2015; a year later,
Kathryn Smith
, who had spent several years as a front office assistant, took a quality control coaching position with the
Buffalo Bills
, making her the first permanent female coach in
National Football League
history. In 2020,
Callie Brownson
became the first woman to coach an NFL position group in a regular-season game when she filled in for the
Cleveland Browns
tight ends coach
Drew Petzing
.
[25]
In 2013, Lauren Silberman became the first woman to try out at the
NFL Regional Scouting Combine
(2013).
[26]
[27]
Silberman tried out for the NFL after playing club soccer in college and taking up kicking footballs as a hobby several months before the tryout.
[28]
During her tryout, she met with medical staff to address a leg injury after making two kicks, and did not complete the remaining kicks.
[28]
International competition
[
edit
]
The world governing body for American football associations, the
International Federation of American Football
(IFAF), held the first
Women's World Cup
in Stockholm, Sweden, in 2010. Six nations participated in the inaugural event: Austria, Canada, Finland, Germany, Sweden, and the United States. The United States won the gold by beating Canada, 66?0. The 2013 World Championship, in Finland, was held from 30 June 2013 to 7 July 2013. The United States won gold again, beating Sweden 84-0 and Germany 107?7 in order to make it to the gold medal match with Canada, whom they beat 64?0. In the
2017 IFAF Women's World Championship
, held in Canada, the six teams invited were; Australia, Canada, Finland, Great Britain, Mexico and the United States. The United States continued their dominance, claiming gold, while Canada and Mexico won silver and bronze respectively.
IFAF has confirmed Palma, located on the Spanish island of Mallorca, Spain as host for 2021
IFAF Flag Football World Championship
from October 6 to 10 2021. It will be the first time Spain has staged the World Championships which have been held since 1998. Normally conducted every two years, Denmark was scheduled to host the 2020 edition only for it to be cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
[29]
See also
[
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]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
c
Taylor, Katharine Elizabeth (December 2020).
'Invaded by Daughters of Eve': Women Playing American Football, 1890-1960
(PDF)
. Leicester, United Kingdom: Ph.D. Thesis, De Montfort University – via DORA (De Montfort Open Research Archive).
- ^
a
b
c
de la Cretaz, Britni; D'Arcangelo, Lyndsey (2021).
Hail Mary: The Rise and Fall of the National Women's Football League
. New York: Bold Type Books. pp. 39?41.
ISBN
9781645036623
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
Rozendaal, Neal (2016).
The Women's Football Encyclopedia
(2016 ed.). Rockville, Maryland: Rozehawk Publishing. p. 1.
ISBN
978-0-9970637-0-7
.
- ^
"Girls at football"
.
The Daily Times
. Brunswick, New Jersey. November 14, 1892. p. 2
. Retrieved
May 27,
2022
– via
Newspapers.com
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
Taylor, Katie; Linden, Andrew D.; Antunovic, Dunja (2021). "
'From Beach Nymph to Gridiron Amazon': Media Coverage of Women in American Football, 1934?1979".
Communication & Sport
.
9
(3): 458?475.
doi
:
10.1177/2167479519871961
– via
EBSCO
.
- ^
a
b
"Football Game by Girls"
.
The Sun
. New York. November 23, 1896. p. 4
. Retrieved
May 28,
2022
– via
Library of Congress
.
- ^
"Amazons Vigorously Kick the Pigskin"
.
The Examiner
. San Francisco. December 26, 1897. p. 19
. Retrieved
May 28,
2022
– via
Newspapers.com
.
- ^
a
b
"Hi Girls Invade Football World"
.
The Maui News
. December 15, 1922. p. 5
. Retrieved
May 29,
2022
– via
Chronicling America
.
- ^
"Two Girls' Football Teams Wage 6?6 Tie on the Coast"
. Sports.
The New York Times
. November 22, 1925. p. 6
. Retrieved
May 28,
2022
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
Leone, Danni (2006).
"The 1926 Lady Yellowjackets: From Flappers to Footballers"
(PDF)
.
Ghosts of the Gridiron
. Archived from
the original
(PDF)
on October 3, 2015.
- ^
Kantor, Stuart (2000).
"The History of Women's Professional Football"
(PDF)
.
The Coffin Corner
.
22
(1): 1?2 – via Professional Football Researchers Association.
- ^
"Girl Grid Players Add Color to Game".
Philadelphia Public Ledger
. November 7, 1926.
- ^
Melinda Sparks.
"Central Florida Anarchy Women's Football Team Home"
.
Cfanarchy.com
. Retrieved
February 28,
2017
.
- ^
"A History of Women in Tackle Football"
.
Angelfire.com
. Retrieved
February 28,
2017
.
- ^
Associated Press (1970-09-04). "First woman to earn place on pro grid team is also suspended." Retrieved 2010-12-25.
- ^
Ley, Bob (October 15, 2000).
"Page 2-Outside the Lines: Heather Sue Mercer suit"
.
ESPN.com
. Retrieved
April 19,
2011
.
- ^
"Woman Kicks Extra Points"
.
New York Times
. October 20, 1997
. Retrieved
April 20,
2011
.
- ^
"The University of New Mexico Official Athletic Site"
. Archived from
the original
on August 10, 2010
. Retrieved
October 18,
2010
.
(2-2 PATs, New Mexico vs. Texas State, 8/30/03)
- ^
"Vanderbilt kicker Sarah Fuller makes history as first woman to play in a Power Five college football game"
.
CBSSports.com
. November 28, 2020
. Retrieved
November 28,
2020
.
- ^
Scarborough, Alex (November 27, 2020).
"Vanderbilt kicker Sarah Fuller to suit up vs. Missouri on Saturday, can make history"
.
ESPN
. Retrieved
November 28,
2020
.
- ^
"Vanderbilt's Sarah Fuller could be first woman to play in Power 5 football game"
.
ABC News
. Retrieved
November 28,
2020
.
- ^
"Vanderbilt kicker Sarah Fuller, a Wylie grad, becomes first woman to play in Power Five football game"
. November 28, 2020.
- ^
Valade, Jodie (May 29, 2010).
"Nick Mangold's 'girly-girl' sister gives up football for weightlifting"
.
Cleveland Plain Dealer
. Retrieved
June 23,
2012
.
- ^
Dellenger, Ross (October 2, 2012).
"Jacobs gets foothold in football coaching"
.
Columbia Daily Tribune
. Retrieved
May 2,
2013
.
- ^
"Cleveland Browns: Callie Brownson becomes first female NFL position coach"
.
Sky Sports
.
- ^
Waszak, Dennis (March 3, 2013).
"Female kicker's NFL tryout lasts all of 2 kicks"
.
Yahoo! Sports
. Retrieved
March 3,
2013
.
- ^
"NFL Football | The Asbury Park Press NJ | app.com"
.
Archived
from the original on January 17, 2015
. Retrieved
January 13,
2015
.
- ^
a
b
"Lauren Silberman Makes Short, But Historic Tryout For NFL Kicker"
.
CBS News
. March 3, 2013
. Retrieved
May 24,
2022
.
- ^
"International American Football"
.
www.ifaf.org
. Retrieved
December 30,
2020
.
External links
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