I guess this shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise seeing that girls in college don’t really have an outlet for this kind of thing. Where guys have intramural flag football, pickup basketball, video games, beer pong, etc. girls have nothing. I mean, I guess they get competitive when it comes to who can wear the least amount of clothing in public and who can hook up with what guy, but it’s definitely not the same. Also, girls rarely, if ever, get the chance to display physical aggression. Powderpuff provides this opportunity and some girls make the most of it. If there’s a girl that they don’t like, for whatever reason, they can literally go after them during the game and as long as it occurs within the field of play it’s deemed acceptable.
After deciding which other group of girls they want to join up with, the next step for powderpuff teams is to pick a coach. Girls admittedly know very little about football, so they need someone to guide them through the process. During my senior year most teams just picked a random collection of their boyfriends to coach their squads, but other teams looked elsewhere. Not surprisingly two teams vied for my services almost immediately.
I was a coveted coach because of my extensive sports knowledge, or at least that’s what my ego told me. People just knew that I was a sports nut. Whether they knew that I had my own sports talk radio show (unlikely, but I can dream) or just knew that I was an intramural supervisor, my sports fanaticism preceded me1.
I was first asked to coach a powderpuff team by my smart, funny, and attractive friend Kate. She was from Maryland, ran miles in bunches, wrote for The Mirror, and shared a room with Kristen. Her personality was intoxicating in that it was hard not to have fun when you were with her. Kate and Kristen’s house (The Jackpot) had formed a team with Jackie’s house (The Bunny) and I knew all of the girls fairly well, so in my attempt to play hard to get I told her that I would think about it.
Hours later I was asked to coach a team led by my fellow intramural supervisor and friend Rebecca (the girl that Matty K was obsessed with junior year). She was tall, athletic, and quite possibly the nicest person on the planet. No matter what she was positive, thoughtful, and genuinely interested in the well being of just about everyone she knew. She also served as the de facto documenter of our class because of her picture taking habit. I swear, she must have taken well over 2,000 pictures during the course of the year. Rebecca and her housemates had formed a team with two other houses (one of which was Alyssa’s). I knew most of those girls as well, so I told Rebecca that I would consider her proposal, but that I had a few other offers on the table.
After much deliberation and talent evaluation, I decided to coach Kate’s team for the following three reasons (in order). 1.) They asked me first 2.) I didn’t want to coach Alyssa because I thought it might be a weird dynamic because we were hooking up (What if she was bad? Would I feel inclined to play her a lot just because we were hooking up?), and 3.) Coaching Kate’s team would give me the chance to spend more time with Kristen.
My main advantage as a coach, aside from my brilliant offensive mind (there goes the ego again), was my access to the rec plex and the flag football equipment. Other coaches just found a football and picked random times to meet in the park across the street from many of the beach houses on Reef Road (where the tournament would be held). I didn’t want anyone else to see what was going on in my practices (no media, no nothing), so I didn’t even think about going to the park. I knew when there would be enough space for football drills in the rec plex and I scheduled our practices accordingly.
My first objective as the coach was to find out who my athletes were. I had the girls run suicides right off the bat to see who had the necessary speed and agility to make plays in my offense. Next on the agenda was figuring out if any of my players could throw a football effectively. It took about 2 throws from each of them to figure out who my quarterback and most important player was going to be: Jackie’s uncontrollably cute housemate Sara.
Then it was time to find out who could catch. Jackie and Kristen, both former cheerleaders, could not, but thankfully a few of my players could. Like the guru that I thought I was I taught my players the passing tree and had them run all of the patterns (with and without defenders) for the better part of 30 minutes. I was convinced that my West Coast offense could not be stopped. In my mind, I was the Bill Walsh of powderpuff football.
After I had figured out who my best offensive weapons would be, we changed gears and practiced our tackling. With my access to the flags, I set up two cones and had the girls practice ripping off each other’s flags in a confined space. It was not nearly as erotic as it might sound. Either way, I felt that this practice time with the actual flags would be our biggest advantage heading into the tournament.
With the tournament still a week away and most of the girls in our class talking and thinking about football it only seemed fitting for Jackie and me to somehow incorporate the powderpuff tournament into our columns. I, of course, didn’t want to exclude the other three grades, so I tried to broaden out the topic as best as I could. Jackie was admittedly awful at football, which helped things considerably in our crafting of this topic.
The Mirror on November 1st, 2007:
Girls and sports don’t mix
Sports are man’s escape from women. Every Sunday we just want to sit on the couch, slop on some pizza, drink beer, and watch football.
Stop invading our world girls. We need a break from you or we will lose our sanity. “If relationship George walks through this door he will kill independent George. A George divided against itself cannot stand!”2
You aren’t athletic. Quite frankly it’s pathetic. Why do you think the “you play ball like a girl” insult in The Sandlot was so effective? Watching you run is like watching a fish trying to free itself from a hook. Who taught you to flail your arms so awkwardly?
Your hands are awful. It’s like watching a wall try to catch a pass. You catch STD’s better than you do footballs. Everything remotely athletic that you do happens in slow motion, or at least that’s how it seems. Scholarship athletes aside, I am confident that I can beat every other female here in a sprint3.
When you play basketball, no one jumps. Whoever is the tallest gets every rebound until they finally make a shot. They should measure female verticals in sheets of paper4.
The only place for a woman on a field is the sideline as a sexual object for men. Don’t act surprised, you’ve all seen what cheerleaders and dance teams wear. Joe Namath had the right idea with Suzy Kolber.
And what about those sideline reporters? Do you really think ESPN hired Erin Andrews for her knowledge of sports and not her perfect face and body? Go figure she used to be on the dance team at the University of Florida. As my buddy Pete5 says, she’s the most now person in sports.6
Please don’t pretend like you know what you are talking about either. Just because your dad has season tickets doesn’t mean you can break down the game. Your dad could own the team and I still wouldn’t want to hear your opinion. You might know who Tony Parker is because of Eva Longoria, but could you name anyone on his team that is darker than him7? You also know Tom Brady, but he just knocked up one broad and now he plows a supermodel.
Just remember girls, sports are for guys. A hint of athleticism is a good thing, but when you look like Icebox from the Little Giants you won’t be getting any playing time off the field.
As you might expect my powderpuff players didn’t take too kindly to this column. In fact, I think they were all legitimately upset. I guess they assumed that I wrote what I did with them in mind seeing as how I had just witnessed them in semi-athletic situations all week. Looking back I can’t say that I blame them. If I was in their shoes I probably would have been pissed off too. This restrained hostility made our last practice a little tense, but I brushed off whatever resentment they may have had and focused solely on doing whatever it took to win. The way I saw it, if my players were angry at me, it was a good thing. We could channel that anger and use it against our opposition.
The night before the tournament some of the girls gathered at Jackie’s house and made uniforms for the team and coaching staff. Now I say coaching staff because a few guys that were dating/hooking up with girls on my team came on board for a practice or two to help out. Among them was the Ice Cat, who if you’ll remember dated Jackie’s housemate. He was really into the team and our practices, so I had no problem naming him my defensive coordinator.
Each powderpuff team was assigned a uniform color and ours was purple. Instead of searching for 15 purple shirts, Jackie and her housemates just bought white t-shirts and decided that it would be fun to tie-dye them purple. After that step was complete they glued (nick)names and numbers on the back of each uniform in black felt (mine said “He Said”) and our team name, “We Make it Rain” on the front.
The rationale behind the team name was twofold. First, and I hope this part came first, it was an homage to the title song of Prince’s 1984 album (“Purple Rain”). Second, it was derived from what was a popular nightclub fad for rappers and professional athletes. The act of “making it rain” was to ostentatiously throw money up into the air (or shower it down from a raised area) simply because you had so much of it. Tennessee Titans cornerback Adam “Pac Man” Jones got into some trouble after he “made it rain” at a strip club and then attempted to pick all of his money back up.
I’m not sure if our team name had anything to do with it, but the tournament was held on a cold, dark, drizzly Saturday morning in early November. My team gathered early in the morning (8:30ish, which is verrry early for a college senior on a Saturday) at an assistant coaches house (at the point) for a team breakfast that featured plenty of beers and mimosas to get the blood flowing. During this team meeting we walked through some of our key plays and went over our last minute strategy (aka we took a boatload of pictures and tried to get drunk as quickly as possible so that we wouldn’t feel the cold).
Our first matchup of the single elimination tournament was against a group of girls that I didn’t really know all that well. None of them struck me as sure fire athletes so I wasn’t the least bit worried. However, much to my chagrin, the weather put a damper on my quick strike, passing offense. All of our drives in the first half seemed promising, but eventually fizzled out. Thankfully our defense, thanks large in part to our practice tackling, put forth a stalwart effort and held the opposition scoreless.
While my main focus was on securing a victory and moving on to the next round, I also knew that it was important to get all of my players into the game for an extended period of time. When push came to shove, the day was really all about the girls having a good time. I had done my best to make sure that everyone had enough playing time in the first half, but about halfway through the second half one of our lesser talented players said that she had hardly played. Instead of having her plead her case with the Ice Cat I sent her in to play along the defensive line, knowing that she couldn’t do us much damage there (plus, there was no way that she was getting on the field when we were on offense). As fate would have it, on the very next play, the other team connected on a Hail Mary pass and scored a miraculous touchdown.
With our backs against the wall and trailing by a touchdown late my offense sputtered. We were relegated to running plays that we had hardly practiced because of the weather and we simply could not score. Frantic frustration set in as the clock counted down. We gave it all we had, but when the final horn sounded we had 0 points on the board. My team, thought to be one of the favorites, was upset in the first round. To this day the Ice Cat blames me for the loss because of my ill-advised substitution, but I still contend that the player I subbed into the game had no bearing on the result of the play.
As if getting upset in the first round wasn’t bad enough, the other team that sought my coaching prowess wound up steam-rolling through the competition and winning the tournament handily. After the win, a reporter for The Mirror interviewed their head coach, my buddy Hoff, a 6’4, 225 pound Irish meathead from Long Island, Alyssa, who I’m pretty sure only played a handful of plays, and my friend Sarah Kelly, one of the few people who I always refer to by using her full name, for this article that ran the following week.
Powder Puff players get down and dirty
Neither cold nor rain, neither barley nor hops could stop the senior class women from taking the field at the annual Powder Puff football tournament at Veteran's Park.
Each of the 10 teams was assigned a color to wear but had free creative reign over "uniform" design and team name. Talent ranged from teams that could complete 20-yard passing attempts to teams that did not understand the difference between a post and an option. Two games were played at the same time on parallel fields.
The quarterbacks did their best Tom Brady impressions, including a 30-yard touchdown pass that led the wide receiver perfectly, impressing all of the men who were watching, (possibly even "He Said" writer, Dan Stanczyk).
Traditionally, Powder Puff football teams appoint their male friends as coaches. Some coaches organize their team into a football militia, others show players a few plays and send them onto the field to panic and improvise.
Saturday's winning team, the Black Plague, came extremely prepared, decked out in black face paint to match their black uniforms, with a coach as intense as Bill Belichick on game day. They executed a variety of plays that resembled the playbook of a real college team, including an option and a reverse. The Plague squared off against the light pink team, the less-skilled Dupe Destroyers, who had no rhythm, and dominated during their first victory.
On the other field, a player carried the ball out of bounds only to be clocked by a player of the opposing team. These girls lowered their shoulders and played like they were wearing jock straps. The Black Plague continued to dominate the competition, on the way to a Powder Puff Super Bowl victory in front of approximately 75 spectators.
"Emotionally, winning it all was exhilarating; we had a great time playing together," said Sarah Kelly '08, a member of the Plague. "Physically, however, is a different story. I think we all have multiple battle wounds to prove our victory."
Members of the Plague said they were happy to disprove Stanczyk's "He Said" comments about women and football.
"I think our coaches' dedication to the Plague played a big part in our win, whereas Dan Stanczyk's team had the talent on the field, but his lack of faith in a female's ability to play football really held them back," said Alyssa Ockerbloom '08, another member of the winning team.
"I am a proud coach," said Ryan Hoffman '08. "I taught my team the basics of football, but only asked of them three things on game day: heart, intensity and to kill. They did all three, they brought the plague, and that is what brought home the championship trophy."
"I have great respect for Dan Stanczyk. His words are wise8," added Hoffman. "However, as he watched the plague being brought upon all of our opponents, I do think he had a change of heart. I had a post-game discussion with him, and he said that he was impressed by my girls, their intensity and their skills."
The 'girls of the gridiron' took part in one of the most fun events that make college an experience to remember. With seniors enjoying cold beverages on the even colder day, a commodore was built and running jokes were started. A bonus of the Powder Puff game was that the women were able to attain more knowledge of the sport. Toward the end of the games, progress was made and the teams seemed to get better as time went on.
But for some, no matter how much they practiced or how good they looked on the practice field, game day was a different story. Other players ran and screamed in their face while trying to throw the ball or make a catch. The spectators now know that these ladies can indeed catch footballs better than STDs, as opposed to what Stanczyk once wrote.
"Overall, Saturday was nuts. It really gave us girls a chance to do something we normally don't do, to push our friends around, smear war paint on our faces, and get drunk at 10 in the morning," Ockerbloom said. "I think we all had a lot of fun and appreciate the time and effort SBRA put into this event."
This was just one of the many articles in what Jackie would refer to as “The Dan Stanczyk issue” of The Mirror.
1 A few weeks into freshmen year a girl hanging out in Glancy and Greg’s room claimed that she was really good at Madden, a popular NFL video game. Upon hearing this ridiculous assertion my friends sought me out to take her on. It should be noted that I was certainly not the best Madden player on the floor (or out of my friends from home for that matter). I simply advertised myself as this great play caller and others tended to agree. Shortly after I entered the room a bet was negotiated by this girl and one of the kids on my floor. If I scored 70 points by halftime (3 minute quarters) this girl would have to do whatever I wanted her to. She was cute, so I was down. I’m not sure what she got if she won, but there was no way that she was going to. With a handful of my floor mates cheering me on I didn’t even break a sweat putting a 70 spot on the board with over a minute to go in the half. A bet’s a bet so my friends promptly left me and this girl alone for a few minutes, but unfortunately nothing worth mentioning really happened.↩
2 From the Seinfeldepisode “The Pool Guy” (1995)↩
3 This line caused a particular uproar among many of the females in my grade. In fact, the star of the powderpuff tournament (even though her team did not win) and I have nearly raced on multiple occasions. While I have not raced her I did race a very athletic girl in my class named Casey, who was a fellow intramural supervisor. We ran a suicide in the Rec Plex and I won by such a large margin that I lightly jogged the last down and back backwards while taunting her.↩
4 I gotta give credit where credit is due, I got this line directly from Matty K. I’m not sure where he heard it, or if he came up with it on his own, but he said it once or twice during our freshman year and I loved it. ↩
5 One of my housemates during my junior year. He lived in the double bedroom with Glancy (Room A) while I lived in the triple with Matty K and Dylan (Room B).↩
6 That summer ESPN ran a series hosted by Erin Andrews in which fans voted on who was the most “now” athlete in sports. The winner was golfer Tiger Woods. ↩
7 Tim told me to edit this line, but I kept it because I liked how Parker and darker rhymed. Plus, I thought it helped prove my point. Every chick knew Parker, but only because he was married to Eva Longoria at the time. The only players on the Spurs in ’07 that were darker than Tony Parker were Michael Finley, Bruce Bowen, Kurt Thomas, and Jacque Vaughn (Yes, I think Parker is darker than Tim Duncan) and I was fairly confident that no females knew who any of them were. ↩
8 This was my favorite line printed in The Mirror all year long mainly because I could hear Hoff saying it as I read it. In fact, I still can even to this day. People have told me that they can hear me saying things I’ve typed or written in the past as well and I find the whole phenomenon fascinating.↩
1 comment:
my team was snubbed in all of this powderpuff coverage. lost to the champs 7-0 in the semi's...no respect!
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