List of female American football players


Women's gridiron football, more commonly known as women's American football, women's Canadian football, or simply women's football, is a form of gridiron football played by women. Most leagues play by the same rules as their male counterparts, with one exception: women's leagues use a slightly smaller football. Men
primarily play on a semi-professional or amateur level in the United States. Very few high schools or colleges offer the sport solely for women and girls; however, on occasion, it is permissible for a female player to join an otherwise male team.
The evidence of women playing organized football was in 1926 and in 1971. It was then that an NFL team called the Frankford Yellow Jackets employed a women's team for halftime entertainment. The following is a list of notable female American football players who have either played for predominantly men's American football teams at the youth, high school, college, or semi-professional levels, played in the Legends Football League, or played in traditional women's tackle football leagues such as the Women's Football Alliance, Independent Women's Football League, and Women's Spring Football League.
Notable women who presently play or have previously played American football are included on this list.

Female football players

Of the women who have seen action in men's college and pro football, almost all have been in special teams positions that are protected from physical contact. The first professional player was a placekick holder, while the best known female college football players were all placekickers, with all having primarily played women's soccer prior to converting.
Patricia Palinkas is on record as being the first female professional football player, having played for the Orlando Panthers of the Atlantic Coast Football League in 1970. Palinkas was a placekick holder for her placekicker husband.
In 2007, Abby Vestal was the kicker for the Kansas Koyotes in the American Professional Football League, an indoor pro football league. Vestal kicked three PATs on April 23 marking the first female athlete to score points in a men's pro football game.
On October 18, 1997, Liz Heaston became the first woman to play and score in a college football game, kicking two extra points. Prior to this game, female athletes at Duke and Louisville had come close to playing in a game but did not. In 2001, Ashley Martin became the second female athlete to score in a college football game, this time in the NCAA.
In 2003, Katie Hnida became the first female athlete to score in a Division I-A bowl game; she later became the second professional player when she signed with the Fort Wayne FireHawks. Julie Harshbarger, a placekicker for numerous Chicago-based Continental Indoor Football League teams, became the first female player to win a most valuable player award in an otherwise all-male league in 2014; by kicking five field goals that season, she earned the title of special teams player of the year, leading all kickers in the league in scoring. Jennifer Welter became the first female skill position player at the male professional level by playing as a running back in the Texas Revolution in 2014.
Brittanee Jacobs is the first female football coach at the collegiate level. She helped coach safeties at Central Methodist University during the 2012 season. Welter would become the first female coach at the professional level when she took a preseason position with the Arizona Cardinals in 2015; a year later, Kathryn Smith, who had spent several years as a front office assistant, took a quality control coaching position with the Buffalo Bills, making her the first permanent female coach in National Football League history.
To date, only one woman has ever attempted to join the NFL: Lauren Silberman, who received a tryout to a scouting combine in 2013. Silberman had never played the game before and botched her tryout, leading observers to assume the tryout was a publicity stunt.

Youth

Pop Warner estimates that girls make up one percent of its 250,000 registered players, or about 2,500 girls aged five to fourteen playing tackle football in an organization that makes up eight to ten percent of total youth football participation. If that ratio holds true for the estimated 2.5 million youth football players overall, it would mean 25,000 girls playing tackle football at the youth level. Female-only youth leagues are growing in popularity, but are still far outnumbered by local youth programs that are male dominated.
According to the National Federation of State High School Associations, there more than 1,900 girls who played high school football in 2016. For years, the number of high schools with football teams and the number of high school children playing football grew at a steady rate. But recently, participation leveled off and even began to go down, except for one group: high school girls.
Almost all of the women who have played on predominantly male college and professional football teams have done so by playing either the placekicker or holder positions. Both positions are usually protected from the full contact present in American football.

Players in traditional ("full pads") tackle football leagues

Coaches

On a per capita basis, women have somewhat greater representation in professional football's ownership than in other fields; this is in part due to widows, sisters and daughters of deceased owners receiving NFL teams as part of an inheritance.
As an additional supplement to the list, noteworthy fictional appearances of women in football are provided.