Story by Dean Zulkofske and Lauren Helmbrecht
Players joke and laugh inside the Fayetteville-Manlius football locker room. All except two, who listen from outside the doors. Their hair flows out the back of the Hornets’ white and green helmets.
Mara McBride and Julia Leary, both juniors and varsity football players at F-M, wait for a coach’s key to open a separate changing room.
They take off their cleats in a different locker room, but McBride and Leary play on the same Hornets’ varsity football field. McBride, who plays on the offensive and defensive line, and Leary, who switches between free safety and running back, provide a glimpse into what the future of high school football could look like.
According to data from the National Federation of State High School Associations, football participation numbers have dropped over the last 10 years despite more schools offering teams nationwide. Jamesville-Dewitt, which traditionally plays in Section III’s Class A division against F-M, did not field a football team in 2021 because of low turnout numbers.
“There’s definitely a trend of more girls trying to join and being more competitive,” Leary said. “They don’t have to just sit and play a sport that they don’t like because all other girls are playing it.”
Leary went out for the team her freshman year of high school when she learned McBride played for the co-ed program. McBride, who watched the Syracuse Orange and NFL football on weekends with her dad, started playing in seventh grade.
“I kind of grew up around it,” said McBride, who played soccer and still dances ballet. “I never found a sport that matched my physical ability compared to football.”
Leary is drawn to football because of the sport’s aggressive nature, too. Leary said she’d often foul out or draw red cards playing basketball and soccer.
“I never really had a sport that I was able to, within the rules, legally, completely ram someone,” Leary said. “It’s fun to have that ability, especially when it’s guys who don’t think you can actually do it. That just makes it so much better.”
New York State mixed gender regulations made them prove they were physically capable of playing a male-dominated sport. The girls remember running a mile and performing sit-ups, pull-ups and push-ups before each season.
Now, they no longer take the fitness test because they’ve passed consecutive seasons.
“At the time I found it very frustrating, because I was like, no one else has to do this,” said McBride, who completed the test three times before the rule changed. “Now I reflect, and I proved to them that I could do it. But I was not very happy about it.”
They’ve had to prove they belong on the field since they showed interest in joining the Hornets football squad. Leary remembers a classmate on the football team telling her she couldn’t make it, physically.
Their peers weren’t the only Hornets that responded awkwardly to women wearing shoulder pads and lining up between the tackles. McBride and Leary said coaches have changed the way they talk to the team and have slowly adjusted well to their inclusion in the group.
“None of them really expected me to come out for the team, especially because obviously I’m not very buff or someone that you’d expect to play football,” Leary laughed. “At first there was a bit of hesitancy from (the coaches) and you could tell that they were almost tip-toeing around how to treat me.
“I think they were a bit concerned that I would get injured. There was a bit of me trying to wrestle with the fact that the coaches were treating me different and it’s not because of something that I’m doing wrong.”
But they’ve earned their spots on the field and grown closer with teammates without the locker room experience. McBride and Leary especially like team pasta dinners every Thursday night before games, the Columbus Day 7 a.m. practice where the players ate pancakes in the parking lot before suiting up, or the practice where lineman got to play scoring positions like running back and vice versa.
“I never really had a sport that I was able to, within the rules, legally, completely ram someone. It’s fun to have that ability, especially when it’s guys who don’t think you can actually do it. That just makes it so much better.”
Julia Leary
Leary registered a tackle in the Hornets’ lone playoff win against Central Square before F-M lost in the semifinals against Christian Brothers Academy, the eventual state champions.
“This varsity year has been just so memorable,” Leary said. “In JV we are close as a group, but varsity is when you really become more of a family.”
McBride and Leary see the future of football as men and women playing together on the same field. They’re changing the way people view the male-dominated sport, even if they’re not trying to.
“Football truly is a co-ed sport, it’s not just for men,” McBride said. “People always come up to us and tell us how great we are, and I don’t think we’re great for anything. We just play the sport we love playing.”