USD Magazine, Fall 2003

.- L ~!t Alil!JMNJ ALMANAC

Putting it All

on the Line

by Robert Monroe C hristina Bevilacqua '98 played her share of softball and volley– ball in high school, but all along she couldn't help thinking there was something missing. That something, it turns out, was hard-hittin', helmet-crunchin' contact. Bevilacqua finally found what she was looking for when she suited up as a member of the SoCal Scorpions, one of 17 teams nationwide that comprise the Women's Professional Football League. The former Alpha Delta Pi sorority sister plays a 10-game summer/fall season as an offensive lineman - er, linewoman - against teams like the Los Angeles Amazons, the Houston Energy and the Arizona Knighthawks. Bevilacqua says she happened upon her true sports calling a few years back, when she heard a radio recruitment pitch for a now– defunct women's football league. Since then, she's switched leagues, appeared on local television with the Gridiron Girls - a nonprofit

group that conducts football clinics and leagues for girls - and taken part in the NFL Experience, held in conjunction with Super Bowl XXXVII in San Diego. "I came out and got really into it," says Bevilacqua, who began her career in 2002 with the San Diego SunFire of the American Women's Football League. "It takes a lot out of you. I like being totally exerted at the end of a game." Bevilacqua's profile is typical of many women football players. She grew up watching the game and playing a little in the back yard, but found no organized football leagues for girls. Head coach Michael Suggett, a former high school coach, says some women on the team have played Pop Warner foorball, but that most have "zero experi– ence'' playing the game. Suggett doesn't see that as a deterrent. Although team practices focus on little more than the fundamentals, he and other Scorpions coaches find the experience gratifying. The women on the team are

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USO MAG AZ l NE