The Vipers – the area’s first semi-professional women’s football team – kick off their inaugural season. And lest you think this is some kind of “powderpuff” league, let me assure you – any one of these ladies is capable of whooping your butt in 10 seconds flat. Read this month’s Pro File to get the dirt

Gridiron Girls: Women’s Football Comes to Central Pennsylvania
by Steve Marcella
Fly Magazine photo by Mollie Swartz
April 2007

On a Saturday evening, the Central Pennsylvania Vipers football team goes through its paces on the green Astroturf of an indoor soccer field. After breaking down and yelling in unison, the players line up in full pads across from one another and run play after play, flying from one side of the field to the other and pumping fists after a particularly nifty run or a jarring tackle. If you’re sitting too close to the sideline, you risk joining the pile on plays run to your side.

The next day, the Vipers take the field outside on ground recently covered with deep snow and ice. Some slip and slide, slowing the pace a bit but not the intensity. Most are soon covered with a damp mixture of mud and brown grass. If one player jumps offside or moves before the snap, the coaches line them all up and whistle them through a set of up-downs (also known as “grass drills”) as punishment. Coaches have used this drill to instill toughness and endurance in generations of football players.

Apparently, that’s now genders of players as well. Because when the helmets come off after a Vipers’ practice, they reveal a diverse group of women, similar in their sizes and shapes to a men’s football team, playing a game most have followed passionately but until now been excluded from. Women’s pro football is coming soon to a city near you, as it has to 80 other cities and towns across the country.

The Vipers players range in age from their early 20s to mid-40s. The oldest remember the days before women were even included in most organized sports. “As a girl, you didn’t get to do everything you wanted to back then,” says defensive end Lori Locust. “My senior year was the first year my high school even had women’s sports.” Girls had to settle for backyard games against brothers, which they sometimes won.

Each Viper attends eight hours of practice a week, and then plays a game every weekend from April through June. She fits this in around the demands of a full-time job and family. And she’s not playing for the money – joining the team requires an upfront investment of up to $1,500, out-of-pocket. This covers uniforms, pads, cleats, facilities, meals and lodging during road trips as far as Richmond and Cleveland.

Owners Lindsay Snowden and Kerry Wisher sometimes make up the difference when a player can’t afford the steep initial fees. Some players rely on friends, family and business sponsorships for support. But even though team profits are in the slim-to-none range, the Vipers contribute to a variety of local charities through fundraising events that have included a fashion show, a walk for asthma research, a dance revue and a New Year’s Day plunge into an icy river in their helmets.

Wisher promotes the team at these events and through profiles and stories in local newspapers and on radio and TV. She hopes the publicity will attract a large and loyal following and encourage women and girls to play football. Succeeding on the field will also require the type of corporate support that large-market teams rely on. “We’ll need larger sponsorships to really compete with teams from the big cities,” says Wisher. “And we’ll need to get the word out to a whole lot of women who want to play, since those teams have squads with twice as many players as ours.”

The Vipers will play in the National Women’s Football Association’s Northern Conference, which includes teams from Baltimore, Cleveland and Milwaukee, along with in-state rivals from Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Erie. The NWFA, one of three major women’s professional football leagues, includes 40-odd teams, making it the largest and most geographically diverse. The NWFA was founded in 2000, and is the longest lived in a series of women’s leagues that dates to the 1960s. Women first played organized football in 1926, when the NFL’s Frankford Yellow Jackets started a women’s team to entertain its fans at halftime.

The NWFA’s Southern Conference includes teams from pro-football markets like Dallas, New Orleans and Cincinnati, and the Western includes teams from Phoenix and Orange County. The league has worked actively to encourage NFL teams to work with the women’s teams in their cities. Kerry Wisher hopes that the league will someday partner with the NFL, following the model of the WNBA.

The Vipers’ coaches hope their players will be able to overcome a lack of game experience and hold their own against teams with several seasons under their belts. Head Coach Jim Haley plans to use his team’s speed as an advantage over larger opponents. His players must study a playbook of over 75 plays on top of the basic techniques many are learning for the first time.

Assistant Coach Red Redmond, the current defensive coordinator, runs a defense that hits hard and moves fast. “It’s a growing process,” says Redmond. “They’re getting more aggressive as they get used to seeing where the ball is.” At some lightly attended practices, the defense fields only seven or eight players, but it manages pretty well anyway against the fully manned offense.

As part of their preparation for the season, the Vipers have been training at Explosive Sports Performance, a Harrisburg facility whose clients have included scholarship football players from Penn State and Syracuse, as well as Marques Colston, a second-year wide receiver for the New Orleans Saints. Trainer Dave Brixius supervises a regimen of exercises, weightlifting and general conditioning designed to keep performance up and injuries down. When injuries do occur, two team nurses provide on-field treatment.

The expectations of Vipers players and coaches about the upcoming season vary from exuberant to grounded. Right tackle and punter Desrae Omo thinks the team is ready to compete against the more experienced opponents from larger cities now. “We’re prepared,” she says. “We have strong lines and lots of talent.” Coach Haley has set high goals for a first-year team. “I want us to compete for the championship,” he says. “The more we want to do that, the better we’ll play.”

Center Gwen Stewart, a kitchen designer and lifelong Pittsburgh Steeler fan who also plays ice hockey, may be more realistic. “It’ll take a year or two to really compete,” says Stewart. “But we want to show people that women’s football is for real, that we can really play.”
In a lot of ways, women’s football looks and feels much like the men’s game. Watching the Vipers practice and play is definitely a surprise. They seem well-drilled, run fast, hit hard and are clearly enjoying themselves. They know that fans who come to games will have fun as well. “Once you see us play,” says Locust, “you’ll realize how hardcore it is. Give us a chance and you’ll like what you see.”

On a recent Saturday evening, a buzz went through Harrisburg’s Twin Ponds Skating Complex. Word spread that a football team – made up of women – was practicing upstairs from the rink. Soon, the practice field was ringed with curious spectators, little kids asking for autographs and young girls realizing that football might someday be for them, too, and not just for the boys.

Vipers home games are held at Harrisburg High School starting April 15; most matches kick off at 5 p.m. For tickets or other information, or to try out, contact the Central PA Vipers at 507-1090 or visit www.centralpavipers.com. Individuals or organizations interested in sponsoring a player or the team as a whole should ask for Kerry Wisher.