What will move the women’s professional sports needle?
Awareness and resilience. When you play women’s tackle football, you immediately become someone that is going to be challenged, that is going to be called ugly. We need to create space for women, and then for women to create space for other women.
With your wins and records, were you taken seriously when you started the W.N.F.C.?
To be taken seriously as a woman, you can’t just be great at what you do, you must be extraordinary and do it over a long period of time. People don’t take women’s accomplishments and expertise seriously. No one cares about what you have achieved if you can’t make them see themselves in it, and it’s very hard to make people see themselves in you, as a Black woman.
What has had a deep impact on women in sports?
Title IX, from a legislative standpoint, which was an equal rights law passed in 1972 that required colleges and universities to create and make room for equality in sports or in the education system. And the advent of social media, influencer marketing and the ability to become a star overnight by telling your own story with your cellphone without having power or money.
What successes are a direct result of founding the league?
We didn’t just create a sports league, we created a recognized sports property, and that made brands see us differently and take us seriously. Through telling the story of women in football, we brought awareness to a sport that was overlooked. For the first time ever, major global brands are sponsoring women’s tackle football. That’s huge.
Women’s sports is nowhere near its peak, but it is accelerating. I’m still fighting for the opportunity to have equal play, pay, awareness and attention, and an equal chance to show the world what women are capable of.
