Emma: Fearless Footballer
Football: a contact sport, a rough sport, a sport that has been conceived as a boy sport… but not anymore! This year, following in the steps of Stephanie Shulman ’19 playing on the boys’ tennis team, Emma Healy ’19 is the first girl in Hawken history to play on the football team.
This sport is not new to Emma since she (a Hawken lifer) had always played touch football with the guys during her recesses in elementary and middle school. She mostly played the receiver position, “in [her] little skirt,” and loved the game. She considered joining the middle school football team in seventh grade, but eventually chose not to, instead focusing on soccer, which she had been playing since the age of six. In high school, she thought about it again, but still decided against playing, until last semester, when her friends Spencer Caron ‘19 and Nate Grossman ‘19, this year’s captains of the football team, brought it up again. At a pizza sale, the players were talking about needing a kicker on the team, to which Emma thought, “sure, why not? I love football, and it’s my senior year anyway, might as well,” and simply joined the team.
Some members were surprised at first, but having a girl player on a high school football team was not unheard of. For instance, at the first scrimmage of this season against Newbury, the opposing team also had a female player. Evan Ditchman ’19, who is an official coach this year, explained that since the US had a national women’s football league, why not make it common for colleges and even high schools to have girls play the sport?
The Hawken players very quickly accepted the fact that Emma was just as much of a player as the rest of the team. Adjusting to the team was easy, according to Emma: “they’ve been super, super nice and helpful. Having a lot of friends on the team already also helped.” Last year, the football team had already considered having soccer players play part-time with the football team or kick in games, but Coach Walton had been against the idea, saying that any player on the team must be fully committed. “I understand where Coach Walton is coming from,” Evan had said, but he also completely supported Emma in her decision to play.
This year, the new head football coach, Brian Stephenson, had been open to the idea of Emma joining the team. This is his first year at Hawken, so the football team had been going through other changes, too. He had coached at Woodberry for nine years before coming to Hawken, and has already incorporated some new training tactics for the team. Coach Stephenson believes that each player should completely focus on the position they play, and is therefore hiring many new coaches, each to coach a specific position. “That way,” he explained, “instead of being a B level athlete in two positions, each player can train enough in their position to becoming A level players.”
Nate described Coach Stephenson as “not necessarily strict, but he is not afraid to yell at you and is more in your face. But he definitely knows what he’s talking about… He has lots of energy, is super organized, and is one of the most driven people I’ve ever met.” Coach Stephenson had always included Emma in the team’s “value meetings” over the summer also, where they talk about leadership and perseverance – not unlike Coach Walton’s “attitudes of a hawk.” Now, the team is “establishing [their] culture” with the RICH acronym: relationships, intelligence, character and humility.
Currently, Emma is juggling both fall sports during her first senior semester. She had been spending up to ten hours a day on campus for summer practices and now warms up with the soccer team, throws on her helmet and runs to the football field for twenty five minutes to get some reps in for kicking, takes some punts, and runs back to soccer practice while taking off her helmet. Rushing between two practices is not the only inconvenience she faces – she also has to adapt to playing football itself. Swimming and track, which she does in other seasons, are both like individual sports, while football focuses immensely on playing as a team. Playing soccer must have helped with the teamwork aspect, but, as Emma herself explained: “the football kicking form is completely opposite from soccer, so I have to totally recondition myself.”
Yet another challenge Emma meets is the lingering discriminatory view of football being a “boy sport.” She had never experienced any problems with the Hawken team, but after one scrimmage, when Hawken and the other team were going down the line while high-fiving and saying “good game”, one of the opposing team’s players looked Emma right in the eye as he passed by and said “good game, boys,” with emphasis on the last bit. But of course, Emma did not let it get to her. Coach Stephenson pointed out that sometimes, when players on our own team unconsciously say things like “c’mon boys let’s get going!”, Emma doesn’t mind at all – she’s too busy working to reach her goals (like a queen). Coach Stephenson said she would continue working on her accuracy as a strong kicker to focus on where she places the ball on the field and also try to average 30 yards a punt.
The team itself has thirty members this year and hopes to have an even larger team the next season. But for now, with a more-diverse team and a coach who “cares a lot about [each player] as a person,” the football team has opened a door at Hawken for more individuals to step up and change our community, in a good way.