This year, the JV Football team has five girls making plays on the field. The number of girls on Andover’s JV Football roster has increased significantly in the past year, with only one or two typically on the team up until this point.
Coach Gene Hughes pointed out that in the past girls have been rostered on the team, with around one to two each season. This season, the team has added five girls to their squad: Shiloh Robinson ’27, Carsen Leach ’27, Billie-Christine (Billy) Colmar ’27, Alexandra (Al) Hartmann ’28, and Lauren Kennedy ’28. Coach Hughes expressed that their presence on the team was not unusual and described it as a positive addition to the team.
“The female-identifying students we have are Shiloh, Carsen, Lauren, Billie and Al. It didn’t really feel anything different than normal. We’ve had, almost every year that I’ve been a JV coach here, always at least one girl on the team. Obviously, it’s not something when I was growing up playing; we didn’t have a ton of girls playing tackle football in full gear and everything. But it wasn’t uncommon. A lot of soccer players would come and kick punts and things like that. They played some of the more noncontact positions… In the past, we’ve never had more than two or three [girls]. Sometimes just one, but in years past, we’ve tended to have more like two or three, and this year, it was cool to see the number growing,” said Coach Hughes.
Robinson first started playing the sport at six years old, joining her siblings on a flag football team but eventually stopped playing. A couple years ago, however, she returned to the sport and began training one-on-one with local coaches. The coaches then recommended her to a flag football team, and she progressed to tackle from there.
“I first started playing when I was six. I was on a team with my siblings and then a couple years after six, I played a couple of seasons, and then I stopped playing. But then a couple of years ago, I really wanted to get back into it. So, I researched flag football in my area, and I found these two coaches who were starting a business in flag football and they lived near me. So, I [did] private training with them for a while, in the gym and on the field — one-on-one training. Then they worked at a place that had football teams, so I just joined that and then just went on from there,” said Robinson.
Leach decided to join the team after being persuaded by Robinson and Colmar, her roommate. She has been playing the sport for around two weeks but had prior experience playing with her dad when she was young.
“I’ve been playing for like a little over two weeks now, but I was convinced by Shiloh and Billie, who’s my roommate, to start playing for Andover JV [football]. But I really first started playing football with my dad when I was little,” said Leach.
Cheering on the team and being vocal is very important as a coach. Coach Hughes noted that one of the changes with the addition of female-identifying players to the team was swapping commonly-used phrases for more gender-accommodating expressions.
“It’s a matter of changing some vocabulary. And sometimes it’s like, ‘All right, let’s go, boys.’ [Instead,] I’m like, ‘Hey, let’s go, folks, let’s go team.’ Our team [needs to] continue to work on that, but it’s not something that anyone finds difficult or hard. It’s just a matter of changing habits. Most [players that are] playing on this team are returning to the team or the program are really accustomed to having at least a couple of girls on the team… So it’s [not] really a problem. It’s a positive anytime you can get more inclusive spaces, no matter where it is, especially in a traditionally masculine or a boy-dominated sport and especially at times when that can come with certain less inclusivity in a space. What I’m saying is that more inclusivity is always going to be better for me. And it allows everybody to think about things from a different perspective,” said Hughes.
