Published: September 07, 2008 12:46 am            

Hardly different

C-town's Stephens not worried about making statement, she's just kicking a football

Sitting outside the locker room before practice, blowing off the nervous energy by cracking jokes with teammates — Ariel Stephens is just another player on a high school football team.

In her uniform, blue and white with the logo of the Charlestown Pirates emblazoned on the matching helmet, it’s tough to differentiate Stephens from the rest of the squad if you don’t know the secret.

And that’s exactly how she wants it.

“I go to practice like everyone else,” said Stephens, the first female football player in Charlestown history. “I wear the same pads. Well, the quarterback pads. It all works just the same.”



CELEBRITY?

Charlestown isn’t a large community. The word was bound to spread.

“At school, I can hear some of the freshman talking — ‘that’s the girl who was at practice,’ stuff like that,” Stephens said. “I will go out to eat and people will be like ‘are you the kicker?’ My friends chalked my car, so there’s really no confusion about who I am.”

The thing about Stephens is that being a celebrity is everything that she doesn’t want. It’s a mature point of view for a kid who could just as easily be considered a symbol just as much as a football player — more proof of the equality movement in sports that has resulted in not only female football players at Jeffersonville and New Albany, but in female wrestlers hitting the mats at area schools as well.

“I’m just doing what I want to do,” said Stephens. “I’m not trying to make a statement.”

If she’s going to get famous, Stephens wants to do it with her on-field accomplishments. So far, so good.

After missing the Pirates’ season opener at Madison, Stephens emerged from the sideline in Charlestown’s last-second 28-24 win against Brownstown. It was a victory that automatically made Charlestown a favorite in the Mid-Southern Conference, and the sort of contest where every point meant everything.

“I was so nervous,” she said. “But I just tried to focus on putting the ball through the uprights. I tried to block everything out and just think about the ball, getting my steps right and kicking it through.”

That night, Stephens only statement was this — 4-for-4 on extra points.



MAKING HISTORY

For every female who ends up taking her place on the gridiron, there is a coach who makes it possible.

Charlestown coach Jason Hawkins has been making history from the moment he took over the program prior to the 2007 season. He has yet to lose a regular-season game during his tenure, a streak is currently at 12 games, all at a school that had only won seven games in the four seasons before he took over.

Hawkins has changed the culture at Charlestown, taking a team with a disinterested and bored fan base and turning it into one of the most passionate in the area. Turning a perennial doormat and leading it to a No. 3 final ranking in Class 3A last season and a No. 6 ranking after three weeks of the current campaign.

But those goals were calculated. He didn’t set out to break down the sex barrier when he gave Stephens the starting job.

“I always wanted to kick (for the football team),” Stephens said. “But it’s not enough just to want to. You don’t know how the coach is going to handle it.”

Hawkins handled it like a coach who needed to fill a position.

“Our kicking game wasn’t good,” said Hawkins, who watched his incumbent kicker — quarterback Damon Vest — suffer an ankle injury. “We needed a kicker, so I called the soccer coach. He sent over three of them and I picked the best one.”

The best one just happened to be a 5-foot-3 starter on the pitch for the Pirates. She also happened to be the daughter of Charlestown soccer coach Rick Stephens.

“My dad asked me if I wanted to try out and I said I did,” Ariel said. “It was very spur of the moment.”

And it wasn’t really that surprising.

It’s hard to intimidate Stephens, who still thinks of soccer as her sport. She’s been playing the game with the boys for years now, both through her youth and as a big part of the Pirates’ squad, one of the last remaining coed teams in the area.

“She’s a tough kid,” Hawkins said. “I’ve always thought she plays soccer like it’s football. She’s run into people and taken them down, and she’s taken hits and gotten back up. We’re not that worried about her (playing football).”

Hawkins pointed out that the Pirates were 2-of-7 on post-touchdown scoring tries against Madison, but 4-of-4 against Brownstown. He says he has no problem with letting her try a field goal, although her opportunities there will likely be limited more by Charlestown’s remarkable ground game — arguably the best in the area — than be her abilities as a kicker.

In fact, it’s Stephens’ ability that illustrates that this is not just a gimmick. She came back last Friday night to hit three extra-point tries in a come-from-behind win at Clarksville, and has just as much range, if not more, than most high school kickers, having knocked down a 37-yarder in practice.

“We’re trying to figure out her limits,” Hawkins said. “But if the game is on the line, and we’re stalled out on the 20-yard line, I have no problem at all letting her try that field goal. We have as much confidence in her as we would in anyone else.”



JUST ANOTHER TEAMMATE

Having a female kicker does, of course, mean walking the fine line between being confident in her and putting her unnecessarily in harm’s way.

The danger, as both Hawkins and Stephens herself are aware, is not in any kind of generalization about the female sex being fragile, but more about simple math.

“Am I scared of getting hit? No,” said Stephens, who said she often jokes with her parents about taking on a 300-pound lineman. “But a lot of those guys are really, really big. And I’m not. But we’re prepared for the possibility.”

The possibility isn’t apparent from the Charlestown football team’s season roster, which generously puts Stephens at 5-foot-10. It’s a bit of an exaggeration, but you’ll have to forgive the team for the error. If it weren’t so generous, Stephens would not only be the shortest player listed on her own team, but — at least against Clarksville — the smallest player on the field according to the Generals’ roster.

Hawkins says he won’t use her on kickoffs. But you get the feeling that if he did, she’d have plenty of protection.

“The guys on the team are very protective,” Stephens said. “I think I’m in good hands.”

When Stephens joined the team officially, there was no conversation about how she should be treated. There was no discussion about the history that was being made. By all accounts, it wasn’t that big of a deal.

“The kids took her in immediately,” Hawkins said, “especially once they saw what she could do. They have done an excellent job sort of bonding with her and making her part of the team, which she is. They treat her like a teammate and they enjoy watching her kick.”

It’s true that things are a little different for Ariel Stephens — she has to change in a different locker room and wait outside for the boys at the start of practice; the boys often have to be careful with the customary pat on the rear — but the biggest secret surrounding the first player of her kind at her school is that No. 2 isn’t that much different from Nos. 3-88.

“I feel like the boys deserve all the credit,” she said, speaking like you would expect from any teammate. “If they weren’t so good at doing their job, I wouldn’t be kicking.”

Hawkins, however, says there is one little detail that makes Stephens stand out.

“The big thing is the smile I see when she makes an extra point,” he said. “It’s awesome. You wish every player looked like that. It makes her happy and you can see that she cares about it so much.”

        

• Click to discuss this story with other readers on our forums.