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Y! MyWebWomen on the Gridiron: Behind the scenes with the Columbus Comets
'Foreign' football becomes addiction for women
In the end, it's just football as everyone knows it, but these are not ordinary women playing it.
RELATED: Behind the scenes with the Comets
MORE: View the team in action | Watch video
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Extras
Photos
Halijah McBeth, 6, reaches through the netting to touch the uniform of one of the players on April 3 at a Columbus Comets practice in Columbus. Staff photo by Barbara J. Perenic
Andrea Judy (9) of the Columbus Comets spits out her mouth guard after injuring her knee on the first play of the season opener against the St. Louis Slam at Grove City Chrisitan High School on April 19. Staff photo by Barbara J. Perenic
Chelsey Boyd (top) and Whitney Barnes of the Comets wash their hair in a janitor's closet to avoid the long lines for the few available showers in Grove City Christian School after their home opener against the St. Louis Slam on April 19. Staff photo by Barbara J. Perenic
The Columbus Comets limber up during practice at Grove City Christian High School on April 18, the day before the Comets' first home game against the St. Louis Slam. The Comets play in the National Women's Football Association. Two native Springfielders, Andrea Judy and Erin McEnaney, play for the team. Staff photo by Barbara J. PerenicGROVE CITY — She's ready. Her time has arrived. Her mom and sisters sit in the stands. Her friends are here.
For Springfield resident Andrea Judy, this is the apex. It's Saturday night, April 19, at Grove City Christian High School's football field.
All the hard work — the tryout in October, the three months of practice since — have led to this moment, to her first play as a member of the kickoff coverage team for the Columbus Comets.
She wasn't nervous the previous night. She felt prepared to do the job.
"I'm ready to not be a rookie anymore," Judy had said the previous night. "I think after tomorrow, I'll finally know what it means to be play a full game of football."
During the week, Judy works as an IS security analyst for the Springfield Regional Medical Center.
For this moment at least, her job is football.
Don't hang up
Hank Patterson hung up the phone. He thought it was a prank.
"Do you want to coach a women's football team?" someone had asked him.
Who is this, Patterson thought, figuring one of his fellow high school coaches was fooling with him.
Two minutes later, the person phoned again.
"Don't hang up. Please go to this Web site and check it out and see what you think."
That's how Patterson discovered the Columbus Comets and the National Women's Football Association. Launched in 2000, the NWFA now includes 35 teams. It brings American's most popular sport to the other half of the population.
The NWFA does have several different rules than the NFL.
• The women play with a smaller football.
• Players have to get only one foot in bounds on receptions.
• Players can't block below the waist downfield.
Other than that, it's the same full-contact football the men play. Only the men never have to explain that, yes, they tackle.
Now the nerves blow in like the slightest breeze. Judy doesn't want to make a bonehead move.
Otherwise, she's as confident as any rookie can be. A lifetime in sports — everything from softball to powerlifting to rugby — helps her as well. Football may be new, but it's just another sport. She knows sports.
Judy also knows her assignment on the kickoff coverage team. She tries to keep a clear head even as she hoots and hollers with her Columbus Comets teammate next to her.
"Stay in my lane, get down the field," Judy thinks. "Outside contain. Don't let her get by me."
Do this thing up
Five years after that phone call, Patterson stands on the turf at Grove City Christian High School on April 18. His Comets team gathers around him. Among the players are Judy, 27, a 1999 Northeastern High School graduate, and 1992 South High School graduate Erin McEnaney, 34.
The sun has set. The final plays of the final practice before the first game take place in light fit for laser tag. Tomorrow, April 19, the team opens the season at home against the St. Louis Slam. Only hours remain until Judy's big moment.
Now Patterson gives his pregame talk — one day early.
"I know you want a flowery speech," he says. "I ain't about that. We've got to do this thing up tomorrow."
Patterson treats his women as football players. He has to do that, he says. Once they learn the game, they are just football players.
"If you don't do the things you've been taught, we're going to lose," Patterson says. "What does that say? (It says) 'I've got to be perfect tomorrow.' That's what you've got to do to win the game."
Lindsay Eckles' kick sails down the field. Judy follows, ready to show her skills for her No. 1 fan, her mom Lisa.
"She's been there every step of the way," Andrea says. "She always told me, 'Andrea, go and do it. You want to play sports? Go and do it. You want to go to college. Go and do it.' She's been there behind me."
The next four seconds will stick in Judy's memory — as welcome as a nail in her big toe — for the next 12 months.
Like an addiction
Erin McEnaney admits her addiction — coffee. She never felt old until she started drinking it.
Now her pregame routine often includes a trip to Starbucks, where she buys an iced mocha.
"I try not to get too much caffeine," McEnaney says, "because then I get jittery, and I'm already nervous."
McEnaney's cousin Will made her last name famous in Springfield. He graduated from North and then got the last out in the 1975 and 1976 World Series for the Big Red Machine.
It's not baseball, however, but football that drives this McEnaney. Playing defensive tackle for the Comets devours her free time — she does find time to do stand-up comedy at the Funny Bone — but the second-year defensive lineman has gotten used to it.
McEnaney knows if she gave it up, she would be like the former players she meets, the ones who have told her they have their equipment bag at home ready to go, if only they could play again.
"It's almost like an addiction," McEnaney says. "You want to stop, but you can't."
At South, McEnaney played softball. Now she lives in Newark, Ohio, where she works as a criminal defense attorney.
McEnaney first heard about the Comets when they joined the NWFA in 2003. She put the idea of playing on the back burner until 2007.
"I remember the first practice I came to, I couldn't move for a couple of days," McEnaney says. "It's very tough to get used to, because it is a physical game. Most women's sports aren't that physical. Even though I played softball when I was younger and basketball, none of that compares to the level it gets here as far as being physical."
Judy races down the sideline in front of the Comets bench. Near the sideline as she approaches the St. Louis Slam kickoff returner, Judy plants her right foot and cuts hard to the left. At the same time, she stiff arms the blocker running at her.
She feels the knee buckle and hears it at the same time. It sounds like the crack of a knuckle. She screams as she falls. Yards away, the Comets defenders push the ball carrier out of bounds.
Judy first thinks, "Just like the other one."
Not too old
Two years ago, Kim Roberts saw a news report about a football game.
"That's the littlest guy I've ever seen," she thought.
She kept watching and realized she was watching highlights of the National Women's Football Association championship. A year later, she was playing in the same game as a defensive lineman for the Comets.
The Comets lost the 2007 championship 32-0 to the Pittsburgh Passion. This year, Columbus finished the regular season with a 6-2 record.
At 1 p.m. today, Columbus hosts a playoff game for the first time. It plays the Fort Wayne Flash in the first round.
Roberts, 45, is the second-oldest player on the team. She works as a district manager for Wendy's and lives in Xenia.
When she saw the game on television, she told herself, "I'm not too old. I can do it."
Roberts has spent 15 years taking her two sons to games. That didn't make her an expert.
"You still don't know the terminology," Roberts says. "You're just not born with it. Boys are born with it. They come out at 7 years old playing Pee Wee and speaking a language that is foreign to me, and it was foreign to me two years ago."
Judy realizes in an instant she probably tore her anterior cruciate ligament.
"I did it again," she thinks.
She knows because the same thing happened to her in March of 2002 when she was playing rugby.
Then it was her left knee. Now, as she writhes in pain on the turf, it's her right knee. She first clutches her helmet with both hands as teammate Sarah Miller consoles her.
When the team doctor, Bob Turner, reaches her, she sits up and grabs the knee. Then she unbuckles her chin strap, removes her helmet, slams it on the turf and spits out her mouth guard.
One play. One lousy play.
Love it to death
Bob Burrell knows his way around the ladies. He has three daughters.
That helps the Comets defensive coordinator in a way because his players are women. On the other hand, that fact doesn't play into his coaching philosophy at all.
"When we first started this, we always said from day one that we're going to teach these women how to play football," Burrell said, "not because they're women, but because they're athletes."
Burrell doesn't deviate from that thinking. At practice April 18, a whistle hanging around his neck, his Comets hat on backward, Burrell addresses his defenders.
"Just a quick reminder here, let's play as a unit, let's stay as a unit," Burrell says. "There's no I's out there."
Burrell envisions a day, maybe 10 years from now, when girls across Ohio will play football. He hears from hopeful young women all the time.
"When I grow up, I want to play football," they tell him.
But the best comments he hears fall along these lines:
"After a while, you forget these are ladies playing football," fans tell him.
Burrell loves women's athletics. He loves football. With the Comets, he gets both.
"Football is my first girlfriend," Burrell says, "and we're still in love."
Judy doesn't love football as she leaves the field. On the bench, Turner wraps the knee in tape as Judy nervously taps her good leg on the ground.
Judy tests the knee. Turner says it looks weak. He asks her if she wants crutches. She says no.
Judy actually returns to the game for a few plays, but she doesn't play for long. It's obvious the knee is damaged. She won't find out how bad until she can get to the doctor on Monday.
After the game, Judy sees her mom.
"Sorry, mom," Judy says.
"Hey, stuff happens," Lisa Judy says.
Weeks before the season began, Andrea Judy admitted to being hesitant about telling people she played football. She didn't want people to perceive her as rough.
Sometimes she would hear, "Don't mess with Andrea. She plays football."
Off the field, Judy says, that's not the case. She saves her anger and rage for the gridiron.
For four seconds, she got to let it out.
Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0351 or djablonski@coxohio.com.
