Football follies

Editor’s Note: Bulletin writer Susie Ouderkirk recently got the opportunity to do something she’s longed for all her life: play football with the Las Cruces Coyotes all-female squad. She’ll be sharing a play-by-play of this journey in the pages of the Bulletin.

Las Cruces Bulletin

I am a woman of a certain age. I am approaching the far reaches of my “second youth.” The blush is off the rose. I would never say it out loud, but I’m starting to imagine what my grandchildren might look like.

I spend a lot of time wondering about my retirement fund (not big enough). My knees hurt when I stand up. My back hurts when I sit down.

Some of the Bulletin readers will relate to this and some will not.

Wherever you are on your journey through life, you can surely relate to the trepidation associated with starting something new. Especially when your knees hurt every time you stand up.

Genesis

So why, oh why, did I just try out for the Las Cruces Coyotes all-female, full-contact football league? I’m not sure I have an answer. But here’s how it began.

I was born on a stormy Thursday in 1966. Not really. I won’t go that far back, but I could. I was born to a father who was (and still is) an athlete. He played high school and

college baseball and football, and went on to coach both. When he was drafted for a short while by the Baltimore Orioles, he hit a triple off of Satchel Page. But, as he explains it, he wasn’t big enough, fast enough or good enough to go all the way to the “show.”

As a young married high school teacher in Deerfield, Illinois, dad wrapped himself around his job. My mother, his wife, attended hundreds of high school ball games, sitting dutifully in the stands. She learned the game, inside and out.

When the football team was doing poorly, she’d sit with him at the dinner table late at night and help draw up plays. Being desperate, he’d use them all. To her credit, my mom’s plays worked as well as anyone’s. She knew the game.

I came into the world during this time. Dad continued with his schooling, earning a Ph. D in physical education, and even as a full professor of adapted P.E. at Illinois State University, he continued to teach football, baseball and golf coaching classes to college students.

I grew up knowing that football is a great American institution. I spent Saturday afternoons with Dad at Horton Fieldhouse watching the ISU Redbirds play, and on Sundays we watched the NFL on television in the “den,” (my sister’s former bedroom, after she moved “downstairs.”) I asked questions. Heanswered.He“coached” from his recliner. I listened.

I want to play too

Then one day I woke up and really, really wanted to play football. I was about 10, and the only football available to a young girl in Normal, Illinois, was the kind you played on the street in front of your house between cars.

Dad stood out there, tossing the football back and forth with me. He taught me to find the laces on the ball, position my fingers between them, (in the time it took for a quick three-step-drop) and follow through the throw with my thumb pointing down.

He taught me to catch the football using a triangle made from my thumbs and index fingers. He taught me to step onto my front foot when I threw the ball. He taught me to look the ball into my hands when I was catching. He taught me to have soft fingers when the ball came at me from above. And he taught me to switch the ball into the arm farthest away from the defender.

I loved every moment.

And then came high school which didn’t offer football for girls. So I concentrated on my other favorite sport, equestrian jumping. I spent the next 35 years galloping over big jumps on 1,500-pound horses. I fell and got kicked and stepped on and pushed on a daily basis. I learned how to hit the ground and get back up. It was probably pretty close to the physical abuse my male counterparts were experiencing on the football field. But it just wasn’t the same.

Until Sunday, June 26, 2016.

My managing editor, Brook Stockberger, emailed me a press release for tryouts for the new women’s full-contact football team right here in Cruces; maybe I could cover it and take a few photos. It took about four seconds for me to realize I had my first chance to do something I’d dreamed of, and tossed aside, for 40 years.

Which answers the question I asked above: why, oh why, did I try out for the Las Cruces Coyotes women’s full-contact football league?

Because I could.

Join me in the sports section of the Bulletin as I chronicle this once-in-alifetime opportunity.

Susie Ouderkirk may be reached at 680-1983 or via email at susie@lascrucesbulletin. com.