Playing Through
Is football a sport only for men? The women who play for the Austin Outlaws think not.
By Thomas Hackett, Fri., July 10, 2009
"Honestly? It's not that hard," fullback Jennifer Beaumont is telling me.
I don't for a millisecond believe her. After all, Beaumont is laid up on the sideline, in a wheelchair, after surgery on her right knee.
What Beaumont means is that making the Austin Outlaws women's football team is not that difficult. Women show up who know nothing about the game. They think it'll be a hoot, putting on shoulder pads, smearing black eye paint across their cheekbones, taking some jaunty nickname. And in a week or two, they're gone. The hard part is sticking with it.
"By the end of the first week of practice, we lose at least 15 players," Beaumont says. "They think it's going to be rec softball or something. They don't realize the commitment it takes. The players that make it are the players with heart."
Pat "Big Baby" Kincheon, for instance. At 23, she's a rookie, one of the youngest on the team, playing right guard and defensive tackle. She'd been dying to play for years, ever since her mother said she couldn't. "She said football was a boy's sport. I thought she was crazy. I thought women could do anything men could – as long as they have the heart."
That's what changed my thinking on women's football. I came to the Outlaws' last home game at Westlake High's Chaparral Stadium in a derisive mood. Most women's sports I love. I have a little sister who used to regularly kick my ass. I'm fairly in awe of the Williams sisters in tennis, of Lorena Ochoa in golf, of UT's Destinee Hooker in volleyball and the high jump. But, I thought, there are just some sports women aren't built to play, just as men aren't meant to be synchronized swimmers or perform on the uneven bars in gymnastics, and football was one of them.
Sexist? I guess.
In truth, the kickoff (which went all of 10 yards) and the first few attempts at the forward pass (really, more of shot put) only confirmed my prejudices. The women's game is decidedly not artful or elegant. It's what I imagine the men's game looked like in the 1870s – a version of rugby, basically.
But the more I watched of the Outlaws' 29-7 win over the Houston Cyclones (7-1), which sends them to Florida this Saturday for a first-round playoff game against the undefeated Jacksonville Dixie Blues, the more I envied their passion. There was in every single one of these women's faces pride and dignity. I suspect that most of them brought those qualities to the game. But I also have no doubt that the rigors of the game deepened and intensified those feelings.
What I'm saying is: I stand corrected.