Girls and tackle football

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

About 3 years ago, our oldest daughter came home with an idea. She is full of them mind you. But her and her friends had decided that they wanted to play football for the school. Of course my hubby and I thought she meant flag football but we were quickly corrected. Real football with tackling, with the guys on the team. They wanted to join the team. Of course that is just a foreign concept at this time in life and I said absolutely not but if she did I would not go watch her get hurt. She only laughed at me. Now Pat, being a guy and all asked her if she realized just how hard those football players hit. How often they got hurt and really grilled her with questions.
There is something about our oldest daughter that must be mentioned. She is one tough little s**t! She can take whatever is handed out to her both verbally and physically. Although she is always whiney at home when she isn't around those she needs to be tough for. Anyway, after Pat put her through the ringer with questions, advise, information she was still convinced, if not more so, that she was going to make it possible for girls to play football. Well, Pat had one last test for her. Tackling her.

I of course remained in the kitchen for this because the two of them really get rough with each other and all I see are broken bones, head wounds, sprains or whatever a doting mom would see happening in her imagination, so it was best for everyone if I just didn't watch. Things on our walls began to shake as the two of them tackled eachother. I kept hearing her say, "Aww, that was nothing!" and Pat's reply would be, "Ok, well, lets do it again." and this went on for about 10 minutes. Laughing was prominent, thunks on the floor made me cringe each time, and the word "again" was repeated over and over with each thunk getting louder and louder. I can be thankful that our floors are soft in situations such as this. Finally, as I chopped vegetables, I heard the same words from our daughter but the words from Pat's mouth made me freeze. He said, " Okay, well, you asked for it. Are you sure you want me to do this?" The girl is relentless I tell you, she said, "bring it on dad! This is fun". He said, "Okay". I yelled from the kitchen to stop, someone is going to get hurt because I knew that Pat wasn't giving her 100%. I just stood there, eyes closed, clutching my knife with white knuckles and listened. "READY? YEP! OKAY!"...... silence, the smashing and grunts and silence......then a huge thud, silence and then BURSTS of laughter. I dropped my knife in a panic, ran around the corner, our daughter was leaning up against the wall about 8-9 feet from Pat. Pats face was shocked, sweaty and somewhat worried and he asked her if she was ok and through gutteral laughs and heavy breathing she said, "Man, that was FUN! Let's do it again!" Pat said, "no, that's enough, you have more than proven that you can play tackle football." He had given her a full bore shoulder tackle, lifted her off the ground and sent her flying about 8 feet through the air and she hit our wall. I would like to mention that our walls are like cardboard as are the floors, sturdy but not like your typical plastered or sheet rocked walls, they probably got more hurt than anyone would ever get in this house.

She went to school the next day determined to change this rule in the school. They came up with a petition and by the end of that day, she had over 150 girls signatures on that petition. It was mid football season when she did this so it never did happen and by the next year, she had become too involved in other things to care.

She is one tough kid, and when she sets her mind on something watch out. She will succeed. So the idea of girls playing football? Let them. I did and loved every minute of it, I played neighborhood tackle football and proved to my older brothers and their friends that just because I'm a girl doesn't mean I ain't tough. Bring it on!!!!!

Written by louie0768 .