Future For Football is an initiative of the National Football Foundation, created to highlight the lessons and values that football imparts. Get involved and sign up to play today by visiting Future for Football for resources, a League Locator tool, and much more.
This is an open letter to the little girls who dream of playing football. You can be a football player. You can be anything you want to be! I’d like to share a story with you of a mom and grandmother who paved the path to let her daughters and granddaughter know they could do anything and be anything they wanted. My mom loved football so much that she got herself onto her high school football team as the only girl ever at that time (late ‘70s) and became an inspiration to other little girls that love football too and want to fulfill their own dreams of playing, whether touch/flag/etc.
Football has always been a core part of our family. I loved looking at one of the pictures in a collage my parents had hanging on their wall my entire childhood. It was of my mom at a practice for her high school football team. Her curls were everywhere, she had a look of both peace and fierceness, and she had eye black across both cheeks. It always made me so proud of her. My younger brother played in youth leagues in our neighborhood for years, and the sister after me played rugby because the schools at the time wouldn’t let her play football like our mom had.
I grew up in a household where women were the real football fans. Growing up, I watched football with my mom constantly. After my parents’ divorce right when I was entering high school, I was able to bond with my stepmom over her love of football as well. Watching football with my friends in high school and college gave me such a sense of community that I desperately needed during that time of my life. I also remember how going to the high school football games were the social events of the fall each year! Football just feels like it’s literally in my DNA, and I know my mom feels the same way.
I had lived in Indianapolis during the early Peyton Manning years, and we all cheered him on with such dedication and admiration. My mother worked pretty high up for Rally’s during the time that they were official sponsors of the Colts, and the company had a box for home games. Some of my favorite memories are going to those games, watching Peyton live, and getting exclusive Colts/Rally’s swag to take home. My mom and I joked that if he ever FINALLY won the “Big Game”, we’d get matching tattoos. It finally happened, and I proudly wear my blue horseshoe and #18 on my ankle.
For my daughter’s one-month photo shoot, we dressed up in Colts gear with my sisters and had a blast. I still like to joke about how I played football game recordings for my daughter while I was pregnant instead of Mozart. It was that important to me that she develop just as deep a passion for football as I had – and the other women in my family had. It worked! She heard Peyton call out, “Omaha” when a game was airing as a little one-year-old and ran to the TV in full rapture. Years later, my mom and I cheered Peyton on through his second “Big Game” with the Denver Broncos, and I still admire all his work in his communities to this day.
My husband was born and raised in Cincinnati and my dad and stepmom live there, so when Peyton finally retired, I became a loyal Bengals fan. Don’t get me wrong, it’s basically as hard to be a fan as it was cheering on the Colts all those years, but bonding with family and community in our part of the country is just the best. And, that camaraderie doesn’t just extend to the Tri-State; it broadened friendships with Sister Sites across the country in the 2021-2022 NFL season. The owner of Kansas City Moms and I got together, collaborated on a super fun Instagram Reel for playful competition as their Chiefs and our Bengals battled to be part of the finale game of the year. It was very popular with our communities, and it brought so much joy in a time when it was desperately needed.
I’m so excited that my daughter’s love of football has not waned from her early years. When she started junior high, she could not wait to attend her very first school football game with her best friend. It’s tough to get teenagers to smile as it is, but they left that game more bouncy and geeked than I have ever seen them since they were younger. She didn’t believe me when I told how awesome school games are in junior high and high school, because I’m just an “old” mom, but she admitted I was right for once!
We girls – and my brothers – all learned so much from my mother’s example throughout her entire life, and I continue to learn from her every day. She’s always been fearless about anything and everything, and she always puts FUN back into every single thing she does. Whether it was my sister having the courage to play rugby in high school or my brother and I taking the leap to own our own businesses, her legacy lives on. My daughter gets to see her grandmother and I go after our biggest dreams and goals and not let anything get in our way, even if being a woman or any myriad of things may seem like a roadblock.
Although we’ve come a long way from my mom having to fight to play football with the guys in the ’70s, there is still some lingering stigma that football is only for boys/men today. Bringing awareness to the options for girls and women that want to play is an incredible thing, especially with all the youth league options available around Greater Louisville/Southern Indiana. The Louisville Moms also team up with NFL FLAG every year for their Spring and Fall seasons where both boys AND GIRLS can learn the love of the game with a no-touch option.
Wondering if there’s a future for young girls in the football world? There is! A fellow mom just up the road in Cincinnati shared her story on how women’s pro football really is a thing! She played two years in the Women’s Football Alliance pro league, and we have our own women’s tackle football team right here in Louisville (the only one in Kentucky) – the Derby City Dynamite! Whatever your little girls’ dreams are, encourage them to go after it. You’ll be amazed at how they can help change the world for generations to come.
Join a league! Use the Future For Football league locator to find a football league in your area and sign up today.
