It’s 8:30 p.m. on a Tuesday night and the D.C. Divas, Washington’s semiprofessional women’s tackle football team, is running practice drills at an indoor training complex in Springfield, Virginia. This is one of three mandatory weekly practices Divas players must commit to. Outside of their football obligations, most of them have full-time jobs. Many have families. Some are single mothers. For some, like Shannon Whitehead, the trip to and from Springfield is a huge investment of time.
“You have to genuinely love this sport,” says Whitehead, 29, who plays center for the D.C. Divas and lives in Laurel, Maryland. “And you have to be very selfless with your time, because you’re going to dedicate a lot of time to this craft. So, don’t think of it as like a hobby.”
Women’s tackle football has taken off in the U.S. in recent years. Thousands of women and girls around the country are playing football on a regular basis. The D.C. Divas is one of about 60 semipro women’s teams. Most players must pay to play, and the fees often run into thousands of dollars a season. But they’re not doing it for the money. Divas players say their love of and dedication to the game of football, coupled with their desire for professional recognition from the NFL, are the encouraging factors behind a petition asking the league to create a WNFL. It would be like the WNBA, but for football.
But the push for the creation of the WNFL is about more than playing the game, said Rich Daniel, owner of the D.C. Divas.
D.C. Diva Alana Rhone, 28, takes a break before the next defensive-line drill.Esther Ciammchilli / WAMU
“It’s absolutely about the NFL saying they value what these women know and can do and are doing in the game and I’m sure they will continue to find more roles for them and also, hopefully, more ways to support what we do as a team and as a league,” Daniel said.
The women don’t want to compete with or against the men at the professional level, although a couple of women are playing for college football teams. D.C. Divas players say they want to be recognized for their athletic skills, and they want the opportunity to be paid for that talent.
Daniel says a professional league of women’s football players with dedicated funding and support from the NFL would benefit the greater good.
“If we play it well and represent the sport well, it’ll help move other sports,” he said. “And the overall respect for women athletes and the compensation and all those things that go with it, it’ll help move the whole if we continue to push the ball down the field.”
The Divas defensive line practices takedowns.Esther Ciammachilli / WAMU
Players say one hurdle delaying the progress of women’s tackle football is the imagery of mothers, wives and daughters playing such a brutal sport. It’s the same imagery that, for many years, kept women out of combat positions in the military, out of the boxing ring and out of the UFC cage.
There’s also the misconception that girls and women don’t want to play football. Sam Gordon, a 16-year-old from Utah, is trying to dispel these myths. In 2017, Gordon received the NFL Honors’ Game Changer award for helping found the Utah Girls Football League. In a speech at the honors ceremony last year, she highlighted some of the opportunities that would be available to women if they were given the chance to play football as girls.
“Women will have the same knowledge and experience of the game that men have – men that end up as coaches, scouts, executives and broadcasters,” Gordon said. “If we are allowed to play, the doors to those opportunities will be thrown wide open. Equality is our Super Bowl.”
The Divas scrimmage during the second half of practice.Esther Ciammachilli / WAMU
D.C. Diva Shannon Whitehead says the team’s push for professional recognition is not just for the women who are playing right now, but also for the next generation — girls who want to play but are told they can’t.
“That little girl who’s in middle school and wants to play tackle football and they go to tryouts and the coach is automatically just like, ‘No,’ even though she’s qualified to do it, even though she can do it. I mean it’s detrimental,” she said.
Whitehead and others say the creation of a WNFL could potentially change the sports landscape and open athletic opportunities that are still unattainable to most girls.
The NFL and the NFL Players Association did not return requests for comment.
The league has, in recent years, seen a handful of women join its ranks as referees, coaches and broadcasters. But it is still very much a man’s world.
This story was originally published on WAMU.
