Editor’s note: The writer recently accompanied her former student Alexandra Robinson on a 12-hour car ride for Robinson’s final road trip of the season while playing for the Tennessee Trojans women’s professional football team. Weadock was Robinson’s media arts teacher at Riverside. Weadock shares her views from the experience, along with providing Robinson’s own personal insight to becoming a professional football player.
By Michelle Weadock
For the Examiner
When many think of professional football, they think of hard hits, trash talking, tackles, touchdowns, field goals, muscles, uniforms, injuries, coaches, trainers, and a brotherhood. It’s time to update those first thoughts and picture all of that, but with women — strong women — a sisterhood and the women’s professional tackle football league.
Riverside High School alum Alexandra Robinson has defied the odds, and not just stepped outside of her comfort zone, but rushed headlong into it and her opponents for the WNFC (the Women’s National Football Conference) and the Tennessee Trojans where she just ended her rookie season.
Though only in her rookie season, Robinson made a difference for the Trojans as she plays left guard and various positions on special teams. Like many of her teammates, Robinson is a strong female, a mother and a dedicated football player. Robinson’s teammates include other mothers, as well as a lawyer, Iraq veterans, up-and-coming music artists, tour managers, videographers, entrepreneurs, teachers, hostage negotiators, mental health directors, dance choreographers, personal trainers, motivational speakers, and so many more.
They say that when you spend time with your adult children, it is like spending time with the best parts of yourself — likewise for a teacher to spend time with adult students it is remarkable in that you see the individual that they have become.
Robinson is no exception. She is part of the womens’ professional football story. Seeing Robinson interact with her teammates and coaches, it is obvious, she has left the comfort of the high school Powderpuff team and has seriously entered the big time.
Halftime for this female league includes the same tough talking coaches and slaps on the backs, but one thing is different, and that is that these women are trailblazers, pioneers, and are precedent-setting individuals in their sport.
They are making history, or more accurately, herstory. The Trojans, like many women’s football teams within this conference, welcome families to travel with the team. So, in addition to remembering plays and psyching themselves up, many of these players are also caring for their families on the road.
The WNFC and the Tennessee Trojans are one tackle football team that is striving to help women reach their full potential through their love of the game of football.
In her words
“For what it’s worth; it’s never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be.There’s no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start all over again.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald
“It’s never too late” is a motto I live by. One that I walk in. One I preach on. I’ve always told myself it will never be too late for me to pursue a new dream, pick up an old one, or start again from scratch. So when the opportunity presented itself for me to try out for an all-female tackle football team … I thought my co-workers that talked it up to me were absolutely insane.
I graduated over half a decade ago. I am now a mother of two, with a full-time job, and even when I played sports in high school I was never any good at them.
I truly thought these women had lost their minds thinking I could even attempt to pull something of that magnitude off.
However, there was that little voice inside my head asking, “Why not?”, “What if?”, “You’ll never know if you don’t try.” And for a moment in time I saw a glimpse of an 11-year-old me, lining up beside a few of the neighborhood boys in a vacant lot at the top of the Riverside Local Schools driveway. My brother played quarterback, me at right guard, and at the snap of the ball I laid one of those boys out. I remember my brother making a show of it, and I remember what a rush it was. I also recalled him playing in high school, all the games I’d spent cheering him on, or leading the Jock Block my junior year, making posters all week long just for Friday Night Lights, and to wake up Saturday morning with little to no voice left and listen to him give us the run down of every last play that led them to victory. Why couldn’t it be my turn?
I’ll never forget showing up to OTA’s (voluntary off-season workouts) for the first time and I was so shocked by the things my body could do years later. I realized very early on that I wanted this. It was hunger. A desire for more. A longing to be a part of something bigger than myself, and a point to prove; to show my children that the limitations only apply if you allow them to.
And when National Try Out Day came, I knew I wanted nothing more than to be a Tennessee Trojan. It was only then as I kneeled on the turf with a group of some of the most athletic, determined, and hardworking women that Tennessee had to offer did I realize that not only was I trying out for an all women’s football team, but it was a professional women’s football team in the WNFC. The highest level you can play at as a female football player in the USA while playing stateside. So, naturally a goal that has taken shape for myself is to play for team USA one day.
I got the call a week after tryouts from our team co-owner, Rachael Ortiz-Marsh, asking if I’d like to continue my journey with the Tennessee Trojans. There was no hesitation in my answer, no doubt in my mind. Since then it has been a whirlwind. I had no idea what was in store. But I took that leap of faith without looking back and I’ve never regretted it.
My first call I made was to my brother, Hayden. I couldn’t wait to let him know his big sister was playing professional football. He has always been my biggest fan in life and on the field since I first stepped foot on the turf. After that came my parents and grandparents, followed by my closest friends. Everyone was in disbelief at first but they were all so very excited to see me not only trying something new but loving every minute of it.
I have learned so much in the last six months of this journey. About what it means to truly be a part of a team-a family, to face adversity, trials and tribulations together, to champion and intercede for one another on and off the field. We call that ‘the Trojan way.’ I have met so many beautiful people that have truly impacted my life and even changed the trajectory of where I’m headed and my expectations of myself.
I have come to know and love myself for the mother, partner, friend, athlete, and woman that I am. Mostly, I have learned a lot about what hard work and sacrifice look like for the good of the athlete and the good of the team. For the good of the vision in mind. It means fueling your body, more sleep, a better diet, rigorous workouts.
It also means sacrificing your time, non-stop weekends on the road, spending some holidays on a charter bus with the team, business trips, FaceTiming my babies to ask what they had for breakfast on Saturday mornings and coming home just in time to tuck them into bed on Sundays during the season.
I have seen so many of my fellow sisters and teammates go through this very same thing and at different stages with it. Some are like me, in their first rookie season navigating the waters of motherhood, maintaining a social life, and being an athlete.
Others are seasoned veterans that are used to bringing their families on the road with them and have gracefully managed to transition from where I am now, to where they are today.
I truly didn’t think I could manage both motherhood and being a professional athlete when this opportunity first presented itself. It conflicted so greatly with what society tells us a mother’s role is in the household. I’m ‘supposed’ to be at home, cooking, or cleaning, or folding tiny clothes. Not out chasing dreams and running other grown women down on a football field. I didn’t think it would work with my children’s or my own schedule. It wasn’t until I started showing up to off-season training on Saturdays, where our team owner would be helping with little babies while mothers were on the field running through drills while she also managed twin girls of her own that were only a few months old at the time, I might add. Or seeing other moms bring their kids with them to practice where coaches and teammates would help keep them busy while we ran through plays. It gave me hope that I could do this, I could make it happen for me and my kids, and it reminded me that even though I am a mother, I can still chase my own dreams while inspiring my children to chase their own.
If I had to tell you what the best part about being a Trojan is, it would hands down be the second family I have gained throughout this season, and seasons to come. I have met so many inspirational women that push me every single day to be the best version of myself that I could possibly be. They have consistently reminded me that I can do anything I set my mind to. Women that have poured into me more times than I can count. Just in the last six months they have seen me through some of the hardest times I’ve had to face in my life, and they have consistently stood behind me and had my back through it all. The level of support and drive they bring to my life is absolutely priceless.
If you told a 16-year-old me that I’d be doing this at 25 I would have laughed in your face. I could never have pictured this life for myself in my wildest of dreams, but I am so blessed to be doing something I love and am passionate about every single day. And to be an inspiration to my own daughter as well as other little girls around the world. If I could go back in time and tell my 16-year-old self anything, it would be, ‘Don’t let yourself be blinded by the path you think you should be taking, you could be missing a whole other journey that God has set before you.’