Fearless Football

By winnipeg on July 23, 2011
TACKLING STEREOTYPES JUST A BONUS
Most women celebrating Mother’s Day will be thinking along the lines of brunch, or a day at the spa while others will be concentrating on their line of scrimmage and gearing up to sack their opponents in a most satisfying and unlady-like’ fashion. On May 8^th, the Manitoba Fearless Women’s Tackle Football team will be in Saskatoon for a pre-season controlled scrimmage. We’ll get to see members of the Fearless in action against Winnipeg’s newest team, the Nomad Wolf-Pack on May 15th at East Side Eagles Field in East Kildonan, 723 London St. Kick off is 11AM

It may still come as a surprise that there is such a thing as women’s tackle football but the Manitoba Fearless are in fact part of the newly-minted WWCFL – Western Women’s Canadian Football League with three teams in Alberta and two more in Saskatchewan.
First as a player then as a coach, founder Tanis Wilson has been the driving force of the league from day one with the start of the Fearless in 2007. Although both her dad and brother had been active in football for many years, the sport was off-limits for her until the age of 16 when she could start touch football. She continued to play and enjoyed the sport for twenty years but in the end she knew what she longed for was the ‘real thing’.

Wilson had been looking at starting a girl’s tackle program for years. “When Football Canada made it part of their mandate to increase the participation of women in tackle football, it gave me the perfect opportunity to then approach Foot ball Manitoba. I didn’t need their help so much as their support to get the information out and they were phenomenal. We ended up with about 55 girls come out for our first sort-of practice and the rest is history.”

At the moment, the team includes players sixteen-years and over. “We like to say, sixteen to death,” says Wilson. They range from 5’ and100 lbs to women who are 6’, 250 pounds and a good mix in between. They come from all walks of life; lawyers, housewives, sales professionals, business-owners . The emphasis is not just on athleticism. “We want players with heart; women who are passionate about the game of football.”

There is relish in her voice and a glint in her eye as she describes the ‘dual personality’ of football. “This is a collision, not a contact sport, but it’s also a strategy-intense game. Our coaches were surprised, even shocked that women so totally grasped the concept of the game and we started right from the beginning: what is offense and defense, what is the line of scrimage and so on from there. Women seem to understand the subtleties of the game more quickly than men.” That being said, these are women who revel in the physical demands of the sport, embracing not only the assertive but downright aggressive nature of it and make no apologies for it.

With the goal of providing girls the chance to play she was denied, Wilson has also established the Manitoba Girls Football Association, the first of its kind in Canada for ten to twelve-year-olds. “These are the future WWCFL players. In the next 10 years we hope to introduce graduated age groups until finally, we can make the women’s league truly eighteen plus.”
Wilson likes to dream big and having coached the first ever women’s Canadian team to make it to the World Championships in Stockholm, Sweden last year, she knows there is a bright future for women in the sport.

“Within the next five years the International Federation of American Football will be applying for IOC status ( International Olympic Committee) and it will cover both men’s and women’s teams. It is conceivable that the girls starting now have a good chance of making it to the Olympics in the next 8 to 10 years. That is the ultimate in sport. What a goal; what a dream but a real and achievable dream for these girls. It gives me goose bumps just thinking about it!”