By Savannah Castor
Staff Writer
Wednesday night lights. On the turf, one team dressed in pink and the other, dressed in purple, lined up against each other. The “block squad” was hyped in anticipation. The quarterback yelled “Hut Hut,” and the center threw the ball to the quarterback. The game had started.
Northwood held its first powder-puff football game in several years Nov. 20 raising over $1,800 for Relay for Life. The idea came from former Chatham Central teacher Leanna Sartwell, who had coached powder-puff teams there.
“Ms. Sartwell came into our [Relay For Life] meeting and said that it had been done at Chatham Central before and raised a lot of money for them, so we decided to go through with it,” senior Courtney Lineman said.
Sartwell was able to continue her powder-puff coaching career by coaching the underclassmen team along with Gale Brickhouse, who coached the upperclassmen team.
“We had cheerleading coaches come up and help the boys learn how to be good cheerleaders and they had practices a couple times after school during the week,”
senior Manon MacAllister said. “The girls [practiced] with Ms. Sartwell and Ms. Brickhouse to learn how to play football.”
The powder-puff game was held to raise money for Relay for Life. The club’s goal was to raise money to support research to help find a cure for cancer and raise awareness at the school. They raised money by selling food from fast food vendors, t-shirts and $5 tickets for the spectators.
Teams were chosen randomly by drawing names from a bucket. Thirteen female and 10 male students from each grade were chosen for the football and cheerleading teams. It was decided that the upperclassmen girls would play against the underclassmen girls.
To ensure that the football team and cheerleading teams were chosen arbitrarily, founder of Relay for Life, Jacqueline Sculli planned out how the teams were picked.
“Mr. Oakley randomly picked from the bowl. I wasn’t even there,” Sculli said.
After the underclassmen and upperclassmen teams were picked, they had a couple of days to prepare and learn the rules of football.
“We had two practices after school. We went over plays for offense and defense, and [we] assigned positions for everyone,” freshman Carson Shaner said.
In addition to basic offensive and defensive plays, the upperclassmen team learned a couple of schemes for a successful play.
“My favorite play was our trick play. The quarterback would distract the other team by talking to our team and then the center would hike the ball to the running back and she would run the ball and score,” junior Taylor Roberson said.
Both teams seemed evenly matched throughout the game. When the upperclassmen scored, the underclassmen retaliated. The upperclassmen knew they had to keep playing hard.
“We were just really excited throughout [the game] and just really wanted to win. We got really hyped and did whatever we could to win,” junior Cali Powell said.
The cheerleaders performed a halftime show that was a fast and energetic dance that made the crowd cheer and applaud in excitement.
“The dance consisted of a lot of movement, then we got into our stunts and then more dancing, and then some jumps and [junior] Ronnie [Godbee] cocked a back flip. Flying was scary for me,” junior Tyler Whitaker said. “But I felt like we did pretty good during halftime.”
As the last few minutes of the game passed by and the teams were tied 14-14, both teams knew the last play would determine the outcome of the game.
With about 20 seconds left on the clock, the game had one play left and the upperclassmen had the ball. The underclassmen had their game faces on, set up a defensive line-up and quarterback Morgan Oldham received the snap as the buzzer rang and ran the yards for the winning touchdown.
“Honestly I didn’t think I had it in me. I was like, ‘Is this me?’ But it was really exciting. I now know why guys like to play football,” Oldham said.
Despite which team won or lost, the game meant a lot more than just the final score.
“My favorite part was the bonding experience between the girls in my grade and the juniors and the playing. It was all really fun,” Oldham said.
Juniors Alexa Bernard, Jamie Palermo and Oldham scored touchdowns for the upperclassmen team and Amber Leviner scored both touchdowns for the underclassmen team, finishing the score 20 to 14. There is said to be a rematch coming in the spring between the same upperclassmen and underclassmen teams.
