For the most part, Saturday night’s championship game for the Independent Women’s Football League, held at St. John’s DaSilva Stadium, went unnoticed. A few hundred spectators, mostly the players’ friends and family members, watched the New York Sharks fall to the Sacramento Sirens, 41-30.
In a national sporting landscape that has created more professional options for women in the past decade, women’s football has yet to find a niche. But in the eyes of some, that may be changing.
“Everybody always asks if we are going to get bigger and be like the W.N.B.A., or if the N.F.L. is going to take an interest in us and such,” said Andra Douglas, the owner of the Sharks and the team’s backup quarterback. “We’re not there yet. Right now we are doing this because we enjoy it.”
These women do not play for money; none are paid and most have day jobs. They are lawyers and teachers and coaches and firefighters. But for three hours a week on the field, and for several additional hours at practice, they are athletes. Training starts in January and the season runs into July. The 21-team league was founded in 2000.
Jim Coffinberry, whose companion Hilary McLaughlin is a halfback for the Sirens, travels to all her games, including this week’s final.
Coffinberry sat nervously cheering on the Sirens, critiquing McLaughlin’s play and the referees’ calls.
“This is a game that traditionally, growing up, every boy can play, and the girls really don’t have anyone to look up to,” Coffinberry said. “But she’s tough and she’s gifted at football. And she loves it. You can’t help but get excited for her.”
Ken Schroy, a safety with the Jets from 1977 to 1984, participated in the coin toss and stood on the Sharks’ sideline for most of the game. Val Halesworth, the quarterback for the Sharks, was a baby sitter for Schroy’s children when she was younger, and the two have remained close.
“I think this is great; it’s an evolving game and someday it could be huge,” Schroy said.
Carol Grubb, a linebacker for the Philadelphia Liberty Belles who came to the game because she had heard great things about the Sirens, said that of the 30 players on her team, only 10 had played organized football before joining the I.W.F.L. She and her teammates would go on recruiting trips to softball games and flag-football competitions looking for women who might want to join the team.
The game itself resembled high school football, in reverse. The players were women, and 12 of the 13 volunteer cheerleaders were men.
But in the end, it was a football game, and a pretty entertaining one. The Sharks (7-1) went into the half with a 16-15 lead, but it quickly evaporate in the third quarter. The Sirens (9-0) scored three unanswered touchdowns and led, 35-16, after a 2-yard quarterback keeper by Leilani Limary, who was named the game’s most valuable player. She ran for two touchdowns and passed for another.
The Sharks scored a couple of late touchdowns, but the outcome was not in doubt.
“This has just been a surreal experience all the way around,” said Limary, who runs a doctor’s office in Sacramento and will start medical school at the University of California-Davis in the fall. “We started talking about this in January and spent a lot of sleepless nights watching film and practicing. I’m so proud of my teammates. This is a dream come true.
-by BRANDON LILLY