As a female sports journalist I thought it was so cool to find this story about Brianna Amat, who has become known as the Kicking Queen. Â She has twin accomplishments as homecoming queen and place-kicker of her high school football team. Â Read more after the jump.
Brianna Amat, the homecoming queen this fall at Pinckney Community High School in Michigan, is also the football team’s place-kicker.
For those of us who were able to play high school sports because of Title IX, and who later dealt with all-male locker rooms as female sports journalists, the fact that Amat can join and play for a boys’ team without harassment or prejudice seems downright remarkable.
She is enjoying an opportunity that thousands of female athletes never were able to enjoy. She is living in a world that female sports journalists don’t even live in now.
I could barely believe it when Amat told me her women’s soccer coach had suggested to the football coach that she try out for kicker.
When I asked if anyone on the team had given her a hard time, expecting that she might evade the question, she said she had never had a problem. She said her teammates treated her as one of the guys.
And her classmates adore her, as evidenced by her election as queen. That is easy to understand, given her easygoing personality and a clear focus that has earned her a 4.0 grade point average and last week landed her on network news shows and almost certainly won her admission to Western Michigan, which she hopes to attend.
But why is it so different for Amat? It may simply be her. But it may also be that times have changed, just enough, so that her strong, accurate kicking foot matters more than her gender.
As an athlete, at least, Amat is no anomaly. In all, 28 girls played on high school football teams in Michigan last season, according to the state athletic association.
Since I wrote my article last week, I’ve heard stories of other girls who held dual titles as football players and homecoming queens, including Heather Cerovski of Kalamazoo, Mich., who played and reigned in 1993.
Their achievements reminded me of my friend Theresa Burgard, the first girl I knew to be awarded an athletic scholarship. A nimble basketball player, she went to Southern Illinois, where she earned a varsity letter each year from 1976 to 1979.
I’ll never forget her grin when I complained of sore legs after a dozen sprints up and down our high school stairs. “It doesn’t stop hurting,†she told me. “You just have to keep doing it.â€
Burgard went on to become a beloved women’s track and field coach in Kankakee, Ill., before her death this summer at 54 from lung cancer.
Amat told me she has her own locker room, where she dresses separately from the guys. She doesn’t like it because she can’t celebrate with them. But that is the only drawback she sees.
Speaking for my generation of sports-loving girls, and sportswriting women, I hope it’s the only one she ever has to face.
