Women's Football League Forms
Aug. 27, 2000 -- Are you ready for women’s full-contact, tackle football?
In Australia, they get geared up for the start of the country’s popular women’s American-style football season with something called “Battons Up” — a night of drinking, dancing and dollars to spread the word and to earn some cash for the West Australia Women’s Football League.
Over on this side of the Pacific, things are not quite as festive, but excitement and hope are building for the inaugural season of the Women’s Professional Football League.
The Oklahoma City Wildcats are hosting open tryouts this weekend at Taft Stadium, and they hope to attract 500 prospects. The Colorado Valkyries drew 300 hopefuls to a tryout in Denver earlier this month.
The WPFL kicks off its 10-game inaugural season on Oct. 14 with 14 teams. There are plans for a Championship Title Game on Feb. 3, to be followed two weeks later with the WPFL All-Star Game in Miami.
Expanding Vision for League
Carter Turner and Terry Sullivan founded the league in 1999 with two charter teams — the Lake Michigan Minx (now the Milwaukee Minx) and the Minnesota Vixens — and launched a six-city barnstorming tour to expose the public and media to the new league. Turner called the response “excellent,” saying one game attracted 6,000 spectators.
“Soon we will be able to fill Soldier Field,” said Turner. “But for now we are really happy to be filling stadiums that hold up to 3,000.”
WPFL teams include the Daytona Beach Barracudas, which will have Selina Worsley, Australia’s top professional women’s rugby player, on the roster. Last year’s Vixens’ roster included a NASA engineer, police officers and Wendy Brown, a former heptathlete who competed in the 1988 Olympics in Seoul.
Look for 11 new WPFL expansion teams by the year 2002, including the Hawaii Waves, if all goes according to plan.
‘I Believe in the League’
It should be noted that Turner and Sullivan have had failed businesses and legal problems in the past. Turner was sentenced to two years in prison for two felony assault convictions and a felony burglary conviction, and Sullivan was sued five times by former employees claiming he failed to pay salaries or expenses of more than $40,000.
But Turner has grand visions for the WPFL and is optimistic about its success. His players share his enthusiasm.
“I believe in the league,” said Roxanne Peyton, a former star running back for the Minx who recently quit her job and relocated with her 7-year-old daughter to Minneapolis from Chicago to pursue her football dreams with the Vixens.
“I think people are ready for anything right now, especially if they think it’s going to be a good show. We are capable athletes and people will see that.”
Learning from Scratch
The league includes players from every level of sport. Peyton is a veteran of Chicago’s popular flag football league and grew up playing football with her neighbors in Chicago and New York City. But other players are virgins to the sport.
Dawn Eckstrom, who played three sports in college — basketball, softball and soccer — started from scratch with football.
“There’s a lot to learn,” the member of the Minnesota Vixens team said. “A lot of us [on the team] had a lot to learn. We came from other sports and some of us had never played football before.”
The bonus? She got the adrenaline rush of a lifetime during last fall’s exhibition as a sack master. “We are only allowed one sack per quarter and I had a sack each quarter in one game,” she said. “It’s such a rush.”
Players earn $100 a game and must provide their own health insurance, so most players have to keep their day jobs. Some teams offer profit share revenues, and playoff bonuses and win bonuses are also part of the women’s salary packages.
So far, the NFL is not officially endorsing the new women’s league, but they do “like us,” says Turner, who has asked the NFL to allow the women’s league to play exhibition games before, after or during half time at NFL games.
Idea of Women’s League
Turner had worked under the University of North Dakota’s Senior Women’s Athletic Director Dr. Kathleen McCann, was involved in women’s intramurals and girls sports, and worked as a tour manager for a professional women’s fast pitch league.
Turner began soliciting players for women’s professional football in 1998. He looked to other college and pro women’s sports like rugby, track and field, flag football, soccer, hockey and lacrosse. Top defensive basketball players make good linebackers, and track sprinters are good running backs and tight ends, he says.
“I was raised by feminists and am now raising my own 16-year-old daughter, and I just saw a glaring need for a women’s league of the most popular American sport,” he said. “Why shouldn’t the other half of America be playing the sport?”