High School Football

To hear the roaring of the crowd, to smell the wet dirt and grass on the field, to feel the awesome power of thousands of eyes upon you, to feel the electricity of anticipation, to hear and feel the crack of two bodies colliding…shouldn’t be limited to one sex.

High school football has been an American tradition since 1920, and has been steadily gaining popularity. Since the beginning it has also been a tradition that only males could play the highly aggressive game. But now, in vastly changed times, the line between men’s and women’s sports is growing thin.

In 1926, women’s football was formed. Sure, it was just a form of halftime entertainment, but from there the seeds of the NWFL were planted. Since then, American women have been coming together to play this rough, aggressive sport once thought to be only appropriate for men – and high school football is no different.

With the new era of sexual equality, men and women have been blurring the gender lines (in more ways than one), and the exclusivity of high school sports has been blurred with them. There have been many accounts of girls trying out and making the high school football team. Some are actually very good. There are some states, like California, where it is against the law to prohibit girls from playing on a high school football team if there isn’t an exclusively female team.

Encina High School, in Sacramento, California, is a high school that is known for having female football players, and they weren’t kickers either! So, now that the world has turned into a giant “gender blender”, why shouldn’t amateur sports follow suit? If they can keep up, and be a productive part of the team why keep girls from playing?

High school football is a tradition, but it shouldn’t be a biased one.