Football Beautiful
"There's no such thing as a fat girl, she's just "Football Beautiful". -Laura Doyle

I am compelled, as of late, by women athletes. It started during the Women's College World Series. I had never watched women's softball, but I witnessed heroic acts of athleticism every day on that field in Oklahoma City. They were warriors and they fought with unrelenting fervor and hope. In the midst of an incredible spectacle, the NCAA shared their latest sentiment towards women athletes in a series of commercials which said, without saying, "You're a woman athlete, study hard because once this moment's over, your only hope is a steady paycheck or motherhood." I think what was so hurtful was the greater social truth which screamed "foul". I queried: are the parking lots of children's soccer fields across America the elephant graveyards of women athletes?

It was in this spirit of questioning that I got my answer sitting in my car at a Sonic last week. You notice a woman who is almost six feet tall wearing football pants, especially if she's accompanied by a woman who is, dare I say, formidable, even on crutches. They were like an athletic mirage to me and as I scrambled for my notepad, I was blathering to myself how it was insane to approach total strangers to ask for an interview, but I was moving toward them with almost wild-eyed abandon. I seem to remember saying words like, "Hi...blog...interview...?" I was stricken once again by my Babbling Disorder, but they were kind and allowed me to join them.

I found myself sitting with two members of the Nashville Dream, a woman's full-contact football team, which plays within the National Women's Football Association (NWFA). This dynamic duo as I soon discovered, are the Rookie and the Veteran, and as different as night and day, but share an equal love for their unlikely sport of choice. Laura Doyle is the rookie: sunny, eager, and tall. She is a shock of long limbs topped with a quick smile and heart-felt laugh. It's almost disconcerting to me to imagine her bearing down on someone to ruin their day, but she's a duel role player as wide receiver and cornerback. She noted quickly, "We hit hard and we're proud of that. A lot of teams in our league will say they hit hard, but we take out three or four girls a game." Doyle's eyes changed when she said this and I recognized immediately what it was: killer instinct. Some athletes possess this valuable commodity and it's a necessary ingredient in the makings of a successful football player. I never doubt for a second that Laura is successful at the positions she plays.

The yang to Doyle's yin sits next to her. I recognized her from the second I saw her across the parking lot. Not in who she was, but in what she was: an accomplished warrior. In street clothes and fighting with her crutches to begrudgingly allow a broken ankle to heal, she is what most people think they are when they delusively believe they're athletic. It's like sitting across from a gunfighter or a samurai. There's an aura about Mona Overstreet that you don't get with your run-of-the-mill jock. She's the Real Deal and if she would have looked at me and said that I'd be dead before I took the next bite of my breakfast toaster sandwich, I would have believed her. Overstreet isn't rude, threatening, or brash, quite the contrary, there is a quietness about her which is probably very comforting to friends and, as I can attest, completely unnerving to outsiders. I also never doubt for a second that Mona Overstreet is very successful at outside linebacker.

Where Doyle shares family stories and we laugh with her at the retelling of her rookie experiences, Overstreet further becomes an enigma in her silence. She does share that she has been with the team since it's inception five years ago. She was a powerlifter and was recruited to play for the Dream. "She's being way too modest," Doyle says, "this girl is famous." Indeed she is; apparently Mona Overstreet is a five-time national champion and a three-time world champion powerlifter, but her most forward request is when she politely asks that I don't cast her organization in an unfair light. I can tell by the tone of her request that others have, in their ignorance, presented this sport as a sideshow or an anomaly. I believe an anomaly is more like the two-year life span of the USFL or the hype of Vince McMahon's XFL which crashed and burned like the Hindenburg under the strongarm tactics of the NFL.

The NWFA, on the other hand, is a league consisting of 42 teams in 26 states and has been in existence for five years. Someone is watching these games, because the league started with only the Nashville Dream and the Alabama Renegade playing one another in a six-game showcase. Apparently, a lot of women want to play football and a whole lot of people want to see it. I didn't know this team, these players, or this league existed before I introduced myself to Doyle and Overstreet, but I'm glad it does exist and I'm thankful for these women. They speak of their sport with passion and in a world where Terrell Owen's contract negotiation fill the sports news, these women practice three nights a week, play an eight game schedule, not including playoffs, and are paid a whopping one dollar a season. I respect the hell outta that kind of an attitude. It gives me the same feeling as when I discovered as a child that there was a time when football players didn't wear face masks or needed signing bonuses to show up at training camp. I was thinking of becoming a Nashville Sounds fan (our local AAA baseball team) until I met Laura and Mona, but I think I'm going to start watching football in the spring.