Trotwood has its own 'Ochocinco,’ but this one is a girl

Trotwood-Madison High School senior Kryshana Pierce stretches before practice with teammates. Pierce has played football for the Rams all four years.

Staff photo by Jan Underwood Trotwood-Madison High School senior Kryshana Pierce stretches before practice with teammates. Pierce has played football for the Rams all four years.

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Trotwood High School senior Kryshana Pierce, who sports a No. 20 practice jersey, but wears Chad Ochocinco’s No. 85 during the season, has played football for the Rams all four years and caught a pass during a game against Dunbar.

Staff photo by Jan Underwood Trotwood High School senior Kryshana Pierce, who sports a No. 20 practice jersey, but wears Chad Ochocinco’s No. 85 during the season, has played football for the Rams all four years and caught a pass during a game against Dunbar.

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Senior Kryshana Pierce walks to practice with Trotwood-Madison teammates. Pierce has played football for the Rams all four years, recently catching a pass during a game against Dunbar.

Staff photo by Jan Underwood Senior Kryshana Pierce walks to practice with Trotwood-Madison teammates. Pierce has played football for the Rams all four years, recently catching a pass during a game against Dunbar.

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Senior Kryshana Pierce watches football films with Trotwood teammates. Pierce has played football for the Rams all four years, recently catching a pass during a game against Dunbar.

Jan Underwood Senior Kryshana Pierce watches football films with Trotwood teammates. Pierce has played football for the Rams all four years, recently catching a pass during a game against Dunbar.

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By Tom Archdeacon, Staff Writer Updated 12:54 AM Friday, September 11, 2009

TROTWOOD — When it comes to real conversation-piece players, the Cincinnati Bengals’ Chad Ochocinco gets bumped to second string behind Trotwood-Madison High School’s Ochocinco.

This season the Rams’ No. 85 — called either Ocho or Ochocinco — has waist-length black hair that is streaked with red and French-manicured finger and toenails, wears Baby Phat Goddess perfume and now has a football resume that includes a play that left much of the Welcome Stadium crowd on its feet and cheering wildly last Friday night, Sept. 4.

“An inspirational little football player,” said Rams lineman-sized assistant coach Kerry Ivy. “And she’s all girl.”

Kryshana Pierce is so much a girl that her teammates — who operate under the Coach Maurice Douglass’ maxim to “think about her like you would your mama or your sister” — ask her for dating advice. And though she has a boyfriend who’s not on the team and she declines all offers, she still has rival players who sometimes “flirt” and ask her out.

Yet, it’s safe to say that did not happen last Friday with the Dunbar defender who, just a few plays earlier, had been needled by a vocal Wolverine backer on the sidelines:

“Boy, you better NOT let that girl catch a ball on you!”

The Rams’ regular holder — she’s teamed perfectly this season with long snapper Mike Jordan and kicker Mouhamadon Seck, who is 8-for-8 on PATs and 2-for-3 on field-goal attempts — Pierce is also a backup wide receiver.

And in the fourth quarter against Dunbar — in a game Trotwood would win 45-0 — the 5-foot-2, 114-pound senior lined up on the left side in the spread offense, went in motion and was targeted by Rams quarterback Marcus Graham.

“I couldn’t hear a thing — I was like in a zone — and even though the pass was short (8 yards), it seemed to come in slow motion,” she said. “I caught it, and I got hit right away.”

It was just the second reception of her four-year high school career. While her other catch was against a Canadian team two seasons ago, this was against a popular City League team and carried more impact — literally.

“The Dunbar guy really pounded her,” Douglass said. “But she jumped right back up. She’s used to it. Our guys go after her like she’s one of the fellas.”

Ivy said he was close to tears watching her make the catch.

“Everybody was excited for me,” Pierce said. “My teammates were jumping up and down, cheering, hugging me, slapping me on the helmet.”

She said she heard from just one detractor afterward: “A boy from Dunbar messaged me on MySpace, and he was mad. He told me I shouldn’t be playing, that I should quit because I was weak.”

Douglass scoffed at that: “For a girl just to be out here — to stick it out for four years of summer conditioning, two-a-days and all the hits she takes during a season — she has to have something real special inside.”

‘A little shake to her’

Over the years, a few college and prep teams have had female players on their rosters, and that has brought mixed results.

Almost a decade ago, kicker Katie Hnida left the Colorado team claiming she was sexually abused. She walked on at New Mexico State, became the first woman to score in major college football and has written a book. Meanwhile, Heather Sue Mercer sued Duke a dozen years ago because she made the team, but the coach refused to let her wear a uniform.

On the flip side, Brittany Ryan is now the successful place kicker for Lebanon Valley College in Pennsylvania. And on the local prep scene, the best known girl to play football was Alter offensive lineman Holley Mangold, now at Ursuline College and a weightlifter.

Douglass had one previous girl on his team — Jerae Byrd, now a college hurdler at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. So when Pierce showed up — at the urging of some of the boys who had played pee wee football with her — he was open to the idea.

“The first time we ran some routes with her, she showed she had a little shake to her — she had a little speed — and when she finally got hit and popped right back up, I said, ‘She’s gonna be just fine.’ ”

Pierce admits some of the older players on the team used to mock her back then — “they kept calling me ‘Little Boy,’ ” she scoffed — and in her own family she said there were people who told her “to forget football and act like a girl.”

Having also competed in basketball, softball and track for the Rams while managing a 3.5 grade point average, she discounts such talk: “I figure anybody can do anything if they put their mind to it.”

As for the little boy talk, she laughed: “I know I’m no boy, and I don’t want to be one. ... The guys out here can be pretty smelly and nasty, but they’re all my brothers.”

As the season neared, Pierce said she wanted to do more than just hold and was afraid she wouldn’t get the opportunity. Last week she even toyed with the idea of dropping football and joining the band again because she thought she might be able to get a college music scholarship.

Before the Dunbar game, the coaches convinced her to hang in there. But what really sealed the deal, she said, was the way her teammates rallied around her:

“Some of the guys told me how much they respected me, and some told me how they enjoyed being my teammate.”

And she said it was that embrace — more than the catch — that renewed her spirits.

“We’re gonna get Ocho in the end zone this year, and I can’t wait,” Ivy said. “I think if she ever scored a touchdown, you’d see her teammates carry her off the field.”

And for all his touchdown celebrations, that’s something the other Ochocinco — “Ochocinco No. 2,” Pierce teasingly called him — has never been able to manage.

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