Freshman girls Miriah Tripplet and Andrea Christiansen joined the freshman football team, playing football for their first year ever. They were drawn to contact sports and decided to take a shot at it this year. Being new freshman at Craig High School, it was the best time to join and try it out. 

The coach commented on how the team has never had a girl start in a regular game without being the kicker. Christiansen started on defense and had a few solo tackles. When Miriah was able to play, she did the same thing. In the game, the coach faced a dilemma of yelling out instructions or not, fearing the team would appear weaker to their opponents based upon false stereotypes about females in sports, but also wanting to communicate with his athletes. 

“There were a couple of times against Verona that I wanted to make sure they knew they were being beaten by a girl,” mentioned freshman football coach and SWS teacher Rick Kakouris. 

This was not the first year girls were on the team. There were girls who tried out and played a while ago and one of them was actually a varsity kicker. Over the last five or six years, Tripplet and Christiansen were the only ones on the team. 

With these social shifts, one could expect tension or discrimination, but no discrimination was reported against the girls at Craig, and Rick Kakouris said that the only difficult thing was that they had to change in a different locker room. The coach said that they were accepted right away and the guys were always encouraging and supportive. 

As for their daily routine, the girls did the same hitting drills and warm-ups and had to run the same laps for discipline. Both Tripplet and Christiansen had a successful and enjoyable football season this year and especially enjoyed the bus rides to and from games.  

Outside of the state, is high school football seeing more girls amongst their team-mates? According to statista.com, there were about 1,249 girls who played high school football in 2009 to 2010. But this last year has seen a drastic change in numbers; 2,404 girls were reported to have been playing on high school teams around the United States. And what’s even more astonishing is the number of boys playing high school football is dropping. A whopping 1,109,278 boys played on high school teams in 2009, only for their numbers to drop this past year to 1,006,013. 

Tripplet and Christiansen have been part of this growing trend of females pursuing stereotypically male sports and have strengthened their love for the sport as a result.