And on the very next snap Kawanna Woods, the Diamonds’ tenacious defensive end, shoved her blocker aside, lowered her padded shoulder and slammed that shifty little ball carrier into the wet grass for a 2-yard loss.
“Wooo! Wooo!” Kaleshia Bailey, Kawanna’s 21-year-old daughter, cried out from the sideline. “Way to go, Momma! Way to go!”
This Sunday morning, while a lot of Miami Valley women will be getting Mother’s Day cards and flowers, there’s a unique collection of moms — those who play for the Diamonds — who could use a little more:
Certainly a high five and maybe — especially after tonight’s road game against the Toledo Reign — an ice bag or two.
“Yeah, Sunday mornings after games can be a little tough,” Stephanie Watkins, the Diamonds 36-year-old offensive tackle and a mother of two teenagers, said with a nod. “I’ll be moving real slow. This is a tough sport and I’m using bones and muscles I haven’t used before.”
The Diamonds are part of the coast-to-coast, 59-team Women’s Football Alliance. Twelve of the 30 women on the roster are mothers. A couple are grandmothers.
"We’ve got all kinds of women, all kinds of mothers, out here,” said 46-year-old lineman Tonya Qualls. “We’ve had women in the military, one young lady is studying to be a doctor, just people from all walks of life.”
While the mothers may be very different in one aspect, they are similar in another.
“You can’t say we’re average moms,” Karen Huff, a mother of two girls, once told me. “Not when it comes to working a job, taking care of your home AND then practicing and playing football maybe three times a week.”
With their 51-12 loss to Cincinnati last Saturday night at the Northmont High field — where they play their home games — the Diamonds are 0-3 this season. In the three previous seasons combined, they’ve won just two games.
But regardless of the record, there’s no shortage on resolve, said 29-year-old middle linebacker/fullback Jacqueline Lirette:
“Not a lot of women actually have the guts to come out here, put on the pads and hit like a man.”
Taking their chance
Diamonds owner Tanya Jackson — who among other things was once a police officer, prison guard, firefighter, welder, football player and alto sax player for the popular R&B group The Satin Dolls — bought her team four years ago after winning big in the lottery.
She wanted women to have a chance to play football and a lot of them took her up on the offer.
“I had heard the team advertised on TV once then I didn’t see anything more,” said Woods.” I was working at an appliance place and Tanya rolled past and wanted to know if we had a coin washer and dryer for sale. I said ‘No,’ but she gave me her card and when I saw Dayton Diamonds on it, well, it took off from there.”
Although she played three sports at Middletown High, Woods became a mom at 19 and today has four children. She works at Bob Evans, does volunteer work at the Dayton Urban Ministry and spends Saturday nights playing alongside her two oldest daughters — Kaleshia and 22-year old Shanice Bailey — who are both Diamonds players, as well.
The women pay for their own blue and black uniforms. They chip in on the travel expenses and they carry their own insurance.
That can be financially challenging, which explains why work often takes precedence.
Last Saturday night for example, Kaleshia — who is hobbled with a leg injury — began the game wearing her sister’s No. 32 jersey and pants. Shanice, meanwhile, was finishing her shift at the Mary Scott Nursing Center in Dayton.
After the first quarter, Kaleshia — still in full uniform — hustled to the parking lot, got in her car and went to pick her sister up from work. By the time they returned, it was halftime and Shanice was wearing half of the uniform they shared. A quick trip to the dressing room got her dressed the rest of the way and Kaleshia finished the night in street clothes.
Through it all, their mom played both ways on the field and especially made her mark on defense.
“I like it when I can hit them girls like I did our first game this year and get ’em flyin’ in the air,” Kawanna said. “We don’t play out here.”
She knows first hand.
When she took up the sport four years ago, she broke her ankle in the second game she played in.
Huff broke an elbow one season, a leg another.
And last Saturday night, Diamonds running back Michelle Welch scored on a 44-yard run in the second quarter and a 69-yard run in the third even though she tore her biceps in the first quarter. Finally, with the muscle balled up like a baseball in her arm, the pain got too much and she stayed on the sideline. Her surgery is Tuesday.
‘I do’ on bye week
The reaction Diamonds players get from men varies wildly.
“When I tell them I play football, a lot of guys think it’s not real,” Kaleshia Bailey said. “They see that Lingerie Football and think it’s that. I say, ‘It’s nothing like that. It’s real tackle football like some y’all tried to play in high school.’ ”
Lirette, on the other hand, has a fan club: “My son is 6 and his little friends see me in my football stuff and they think it’s the coolest thing. And my nephew he brags on me.”
Some of the big boys appreciate it, too.
“My dude had me running the steps at home the other day,” the 41-year-old Woods said of her boyfriend, Steve Smith, one of the assistant coaches. “He said ’cause I’m one of the older players I got to push myself harder.”
But it’s Lirette’s fiancé — David Brombaugh — who gets it the most.
“We’re getting married the end of this month,” she said. “I told him it had to be on the 28th. That’s the one Saturday we don’t play. It’s our bye week.”
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