by Glenn Tschimpke
Staff Writer
Step aside, boys. The girls are ready for some football.
The Jacksonville Dixie Blues, Northeast Florida’s first women’s professional tackle football team has suited up and is ready to bang some heads. That’s right — women. Football has been adopted by women and taken to the professional level.
The Dixie Blues are one of 16 teams in the Women’s American Football League, which stretches from Hawaii to Indianapolis to Tampa. Jacksonville joined the WAFL this year as an expansion team in the league’s South Atlantic Division of the Atlantic Conference, joining the Orlando Fire and the Tampa Bay Force. Each team plays a 10-game schedule, which ends in mid- January, followed by playoffs and the World Women’s Bowl Football Championship Feb. 9.
Although it may seem a little weird to associate names like Angela and Linda to positions like linebacker and fullback, these women are serious about playing football. After years of being relegated to sports like softball and volleyball and maybe even a little flag football, the Jacksonville Dixie Blues enables women to break from the feminine stereotype and lay some wicked hits on their foes.
Chelley Hewitt is a softball and volleyball refugee from her high school and college years. The 30-year-old parcel company manager played previously for WAFL’s Daytona and Orlando teams as a linebacker. When the Jacksonville franchise formed, she jumped at the opportunity.
“I didn’t like the drive,” said the Jacksonville resident. “I did it for the sport. I wanted to play that bad.”
Hewitt eschewed her defensive experience for a shot at fullback on the Dixie Blues.
“Fullback is kind of like linebacker on the other side of the ball,” she explained. “You’re always banging around. You’re always going to get hit. If you don’t hit, you’re going to get hit. You have to go initiate the contact. I really enjoy it.”
Jan Spence is a sales and marketing specialist who plays offensive guard for the Dixie Blues. Without the deep pocketbooks like the other professional football team in town, Spence doubles as the director of media relations and marketing for the team.
“It’s very grass roots,” she said. “Obviously, we don’t have the support — advertising and sponsorship support that your more established leagues do.”
At 34, she relishes the opportunity to shed the dainty-girl image and shove some people around.
“We all do it because we love the sport and because it’s an opportunity for us to play football on a physical level,” she said “Particularly at our age, once you get out of college, there’s not a whole lot available to you. There’s recreation leagues and that sort of thing but you’re not having real good solid coaching.”
Player recruitment could very well be like the early days of organized men’s football. A friend saw Kaylene Maddox at a bar one night and convinced her to try out for the team. Without previous football experience, she caught on quickly and blended right in as a tight end.
“I like the game,” she said. “It’s rough and tough. I’ve been walking away with bruises. It’s a violent sport — more violent than I ever thought but it’s fun at the same time. It’s overall starting from scratch so it’s a good chance to go out there and improve your knowledge of the game as far as seeing it on TV. Now I’m actually playing it. A lot more goes on that we didn’t know about.
“Girls competing against girls is not something that’s undoable as most people think because it’s still against women. It’s evened out because it’s not girls trying to beat guys. It’s not girls trying to say that we can beat guys. It’s girls wanting to play the game that guys play and it’s played at a woman’s level. ”
Last Thursday was the final practice at Englewood High School before the Dixie Blues’ first game against the Orlando Fire Saturday. The team knelt around head coach Don Braddock. No pads that night — Braddock didn’t want to wear his team out before the game. Firm yet patient, the animated Braddock explained the technique of football to his team, many of whom have only seen football on TV.
“They’re very receptive,” he explained about teaching women football. “In some ways it’s easier because they’ve never had another football coach. So I told them if they don’t know how to play football, it’s my fault because I’m the only guy they’ve ever heard it from. In other ways, the basic fundamentals that you learn growing up playing football, they started from scratch on all that. They’re very attentive and they’re very intelligent but fundamentally they’re just starting. I’ve tried to come out here and teach real good technique and real good logic so that I can teach the game as well as teaching them how to play it and not get hurt doing it. That’s one of my main goals.”
Braddock is a lifetime football man with years of experience as a player and a coach and has the scars to prove it. With various coaching positions on his resume, from high school to college to the Jacksonville Tomcats, the Dixie Blues could be his greatest coaching triumph if he can mold a winner out of the team. His biggest obstacle may be identifying the strengths and weaknesses in women playing a traditionally men’s game and being able to develop their skills accordingly.
“We’re doing a lot of finesse stuff, which girls are good at,” he said. “They understand the context of things a lot better than guys. I think their spatial intuition about pass routes and things is incredible.”
With the prospect of facing the veteran Orlando Fire, Braddock was admittedly nervous that his expansion Dixie Blues might not be ready.
“[Orlando] has a lot of experience,” he said. “They’ve got some big girls. They have a good coaching staff down there.”
Women’s sports have always played bridesmaid to their male counterparts. Attendance is usually scant and television coverage is a pie-in-the-sky dream for most leagues, with the exception of women’s professional basketball. The girls on the Dixie Blues don’t seem to mind. Although most would love a packed house at their home stadium at Englewood High School for every game, the thrill of football goes deeper than that for most.
“I think every women’s sport is pretty much the same,” said Dixie Blues quarterback Brantley Mack, who is the sports director for the Arlington YMCA. “It doesn’t draw a good crowd until it gets up into the Olympic titles. Then you get a good crowd. I think the people that we will draw will be our families, of course, and friends and relatives.”
If no one shows up to watch, Mack won’t mind.
“No, because we’ve been brought up on that. You can probably ask every girl that plays; we play because we enjoy playing — just to play. I think we would play the same if there was one person in the stands or 10,000 people.”
Braddock’s fears were quelled Saturday night when his Dixie Blues traveled to Central Florida to play the seasoned Orlando team. A sparse crowd watched the Dixie Blues lead the Fire well into the fourth quarter. Jacksonville running back Kim “Rocky” Brown ripped off three long touchdown runs that were called back on penalties. Braddock alluded that the referees started calling picky penalties after it was clear that Jacksonville would run up the score.
“He was trying to keep it close,” said Braddock. “He didn’t know that Orlando already played four games this year and were in better shape than us. We just ran out of gas.”
The Fire kept plugging away while the Dixie Blues tuckered out. Orlando tied the game at the end of regulation and went on to win it in overtime 28-22.
Despite the loss, the Dixie Blues performance looked promising for a first effort. Jacksonville has a bye week this Saturday before Orlando comes to town Nov. 17 for a rematch. Through his coach-speak of wanting to correct fundamental mistakes and other miscues, Braddock is optimistic.
“Don’t get me wrong, I think they’re going to do well,” he said “We have a good core of girls. They’re eager.”
Like any fledgling organization, pay in the Dixie Blues is little or none. Players don’t receive a paycheck for their efforts but are entitled to a percentage of the net receipts at the end of the season, though few think it will amount to much.
“We’re still hoping to find a corporate sponsor from Jacksonville that would like to help out a bunch of girls that are mostly a bunch of tomboys that always wanted to play men’s sports,” said Braddock. “We have a lot of girls that have waited their whole lives for this.”