Coach Natalie Randolph, a Modest Introduction

After the first football game of the 2010 season, a loss by the score of 28-0, head coach Natalie Randolph told the crush of reporters, "We lost a football game, that's all. We lost a football game."

She was right, of course, but somehow, with the ESPN guys, the Washington Post guys, several TV crews, anywhere from six to ten photographers on the ground and god knows how many print journalists ringing the track around the field, plus an HBO camera crew with prominent boom mike following Randolph's every move from pre-game warm-ups through the handshake line, it was easy to forget it was a high school football game.

It is a principle of physics that the act of observing will influence the phenomenon being observed. And so it was with the inaugural game of the Natalie Randolph Era for the Coolidge Colts.

I'm lucky enough to be working on a feature about Randolph and the Coolidge program. I spent all of last Friday at the D.C. high school, wandering the halls with the coach, with vice-principal Vernard Howard, meeting with the staff and principal Thelma Jarrett. That day? It felt special. It was undeniable.

The first week of school always feels different, but a big part of the reason this first Friday felt special was the anticipation of the Colts football game that evening. Typically, the first game for Coolidge would go unnoticed by all except the students, faculty, staff and alumni, but nationally the Natalie Randolph story has been treated as anything but typical.

The attention has been swift, overwhelming and unexpected, particularly by Randolph herself. In fact, when I asked her if she saw this attention coming, she said, "No, No!" and then had to laugh about it all.

Mostly because the school, the administration and the football players are known to Randolph, an environmental sciences teacher at Coolidge, she didn't really have to introduce herself to her team -- most of them already knew her.

I 'knew' her only as a football player. I first saw Randolph play in the 2006 NWFA championship, a game that her team, the D.C. Divas, won handily over the Oklahoma City Lightning. The Divas and the Pittsburgh Passion were respected rivals and Randolph's name has come up often in conversation with many of the Passion players I've interviewed over the years.

Walking the halls with her last week in search of a color printer she could use, one of her players came up to her with an effusive "Coach!" and gave her a big hug. Her response? "Where's your tie?" It was a good natured, warm admonition, as her players were all to wear shirts and ties last Friday and I sub-conciously spent the remainder of our walk picking out tie-clad young men.

Still in search of a printer, we passed some students on the stairwell, one of whom cussed in conversation with the other. I didn't even hear it but Randolph, like all teachers, has a singular ability to pick up on those kinds of transgressions and quickly correct them, which she did with a sharp, "Watch your mouth." The coach Randolph story may be all the rage and she, a young African-American woman coaching boys playing the manliest of sports, may be the media's darling, but she is still a science teacher trying to impart some knowledge and maybe plant the seed of interest in science in a few Coolidge students.

That is a fact not lost on Principal Jarrett, who chose Randolph not for her Divas resume or her years as a track star at the University of Virginia, but for her vision of athletics working hand in hand with academics. Her players attend a mandatory study hall every day for an hour when school lets out. Football is the carrot to get them there and the hope is, once there, with appropriate support, the boys can be successful student-athletes, with the emphasis on student.

When we picture a football coach, we have a certain image in mind. Grizzled. Square jawed. Male. But Randolph is none of those things. She is petite and pretty and young. Well, she is square-jawed and her jaw was set through much of Friday night's loss, prompting one of the photogs next to me to say, "She's so non-emotive. This is frustrating."

The game itself started almost too perfectly, as junior Calvin Brown took in the opening kickoff from the Carroll Lions and raced up the field into daylight. He had a pretty clear lane the whole way into the endzone, but slipped around the 46 yard line. The Colts put together a nice drive from there, but they made it hard for themselves, as they were penalized early and often. At some point in the game, I lost track, but there were three or four pre-snap penalties on Coolidge in their very first drive which I believe were directly attributable to nerves, the packed house and the throng of media rabble. After all, these are high school kids accustomed to several hundred people in the stands, not several thousand.

That first drive fizzled at the Lions' 3 yard line and the game remained scoreless into the second quarter before Carroll scored to make it 7-0 at the half. The Coolidge squad is young and undersized, they lost their best offensive player, Calvin Strong, to injury early in the first half and eventually they gave way to Carroll, which dominated the second half. With the score 21-0 late in the game, I made a note to myself that coach Randolph's biggest challenge at this point was to keep frustration and resignation at bay for her players.

The challenges are great for the coach. Her team is fast, but raw and small. It always takes time for a coaching staff to coalesce, and for the team as a whole, staff and players, to come together. It'll be interesting to see how Randolph handles it all, now that the initial rush of enthusiasm and commotion has passed.

I can hardly wait to get down to Coolidge again.

D.C. Area Names Woman Head Coach

From True/Slant on March 13, 2010:


D.C. High School Names Woman as Head Football Coach

Congratulation Natalie Randolph, former wide receiver for the D.C. Divas, who was named as the head football coach of the Coolidge High School team in D.C.

Randolph will run across some detractors and some people, no doubt. will be threatened by the notion of a woman leading a boys team, as Bob Cooke points out. (See Bob, this is why I never, ever read comments posted to stories. But then, I am a dinosaur.)

But Randolph’s most important job — winning over the locker room — is already done, according to the Washington Post, who broke the story:

One of the most difficult groups of people to potentially sway proved to be the most easily convinced. When Randolph met with about 40 members of the team in a school conference room on Tuesday afternoon, some of the players had already heard rumors of her appointment. After Principal Thelma Jarrett introduced Randolph, there was overwhelming applause because Randolph is a popular and well-liked teacher among the Coolidge student body.

Kate Sullivan, of the Pittsburgh Passion, texted me last night to let me know how thrilled she was for Randolph who is, according to Sullivan, “a grt girl.” (At least I think that was Sully’s text shorthand.)

As a player with the Divas, she won a championship and played in another championship game last year. I don’t know Coach Randolph personally, but I have seen her play. She’s a good player — disciplined, tough and smart. (Actually, most of the Divas are. That is one good team.)

I’m sure she’ll do well as the head coach, but it won’t happen overnight. It will take a while before that team takes on Randolph’s stamp. I see a road trip to D.C. a Coolidge High game in my fall plans.

For more on this story, which seems to have been picked up everywhere, the Diva’s website has links to all those stories and the Post’s photo gallery is great.

Woman on the Offensive Line Plays Last Football Game

From True/Slant on June 30, 2009


Rhonda Donahoo told me this wasn’t the way she wanted to end her football career. She had played the 2009 season against her doctor’s wishes, having already pushed her body past reasonable limits, so she knew the Pittsburgh Passion’s 27-17 loss at the D.C. Divas marked her final game in uniform. The playoff loss was just the third loss for this full-contact women’s football team in as many seasons, during the course of which they compiled an overall record of 27-3. The Divas advanced and will host the Boston Militia in the eastern conference championship game on July 11th, the winner of which will play in the IWFL (Independent Women’s Football League) Championship game in Austin, Texas on July 25th.

But Pittsburgh’s Rhonda Donahoo can put her shoulder pads in mothballs and place her banged up helmet on the mantle. She played her six year career on the offensive line, where bodies take and dish out some of the fiercest punishment on a football field and the endeavor has taken its toll.

There at the very beginning, Donahoo is one of the 11 active players who remain from that original 2003 Pittsburgh Passion roster. Back then, the team was affiliated with a different league, then the NWFA and these women, volunteer football players, raised money to get the team up and running (and continue to cultivate sponsors and fund-raise to this day). They were there for the first practice, the first scrimmage and the first game. They played through growing pains and rough years, when they were all really just figuring out how to play organized football. They’ve seen coaches come and go and have called four different Pittsburgh area fields their home turf.

In 2007, the squad largely reflected that original roster and, on a muggy July night in Nashville, they won the NWFA championship. Donahoo played that game with one knee sort of taped and banded into place — a jerry-rigged invention of a creative training staff catering to her desire to finish out the run on the field. One recent evening, she sat down with me and recounted the litany of injuries, but there were so many, I can’t remember them all and I’ve certainly forgotten some of the details. Following the 2007 championship, Donahoo hobbled into the sunset and underwent multiple surgeries. She was laid up for months. She knew she could never play football again, but hoped to resume some normal activities, like taking a spin on a bicycle, or just going for a long, aimless walk.

In 2008, the team switched leagues (from the NWFA to the IWFL) while Donahoo rehabbed and checked the scores; she just couldn’t bring herself to sit in the stands and watch. The Passion were undefeated through the regular season, but lost in the 2008 Eastern Conference Championship game in Chicago. Donahoo decided to give playing one more shot, to try to squeeze one more season out of her knees and ankles.

So she returned to the team in the winter of 2009, started every game at guard and was named an alternate to the IWFL all-star squad. A little over two weeks ago, with a playoff berth on the line, Donahoo played her thankless role on the offensive line, as the Passion beat the New York Sharks in an overtime thriller to end the regular season. With that, she had one more shot at a championship.

Of course, playoff seeding being what it is, Pittsburgh’s first test was to beat the D.C. Divas, their long time rival and the only team which had beaten them in 2009. Still, the team felt, or maybe they hoped, their wild victory in New York would be the springboard to another championship run, the last chance for Donahoo and some of the other original players to win a second title before focusing their energies on other endeavors. As Pittsburgh Steelers Hall of Fame coach Chuck Noll said, at some point, you have to get on with your life’s work.

The June 27th playoff game in suburban D.C. was one of missed opportunities for the Passion. With the teams slugging out a scoreless game through the 1st quarter, on the sidelines, I felt like Pittsburgh was winning the battle of attrition, when all of a sudden, D.C. was threatening to score from the Pittsburgh 10. But the Pittsburgh defense stiffened, led by Jen Dulski who hammered Diva quarterback Allyson Hamlin on a blitz, then made another tackle for no gain on a run. The ball went over on downs, but the Passion turned it right back over with a fumble. The Divas punched it in easily. It was just that kind of a night — one step forward, two steps back.

Pittsburgh hung in there, but made mistakes at key moments, while the Divas avoided big mistakes. After the Passion went up 10-7 early in the 3rd quarter on an Amanda Haeg scamper into the corner of the end zone, D.C. answered quickly, as Hamlin tossed a beauty of a fade route to Tara Stephenson for a touchdown. (I have to take a moment to point out that Hamlin and Stephenson run that fade pattern as well as any quarterback-wide out combination I’ve seen at any level. For real.) From there, D.C. cruised, ensuring that there would be no shot at a second title for Donahoo and the Passion.

I’ve spent a couple of seasons around the team. I’ve gotten to know them as football players and as people, too. There are always a handful of veterans threatening to retire; I’ve learned that sometimes they mean it and sometimes they don’t. But this year I get the eerie feeling a lot of these players have played their last games in black and gold.

Seasons end and players part ways, leaving behind team workouts, film sessions, practices, travel days and game day routines. The transition is always tough, but for returning players, the sting of cleaning out their lockers is balanced by the promise of another season still to come; fall workouts will be upon them before they know it. For those who have played their last game in uniform, the sense of loss can be overwhelming.

Just moments after the horn sounded the end of the game, the Pittsburgh players huddled together on the field and Donahoo knelt a few yards behind them, flanked by two teammates. I don’t know if she was felled by physical pain, exhaustion, overwhelming emotion, or, most likely, some combination of the three. Eventually, she pulled off her shoulder pads, pulled herself up, and joined her teammates. For the last time on a football field.

Later that night, over beers, she teared up when we talked about it being the end of the line. And then, as she always has, she became the life of the party, goofing off with total strangers in the suburban DC hotel bar, dancing, raising a ruckus and entertaining her teammates. Maybe that was the last time, too.

Passion Loses in Playoffs to D.C. Divas

27-17 loss bounced Pittsburgh from the post-season at True/Slant:

trueslant.com/jodydiperna/2009/06/30/woman-on-the-offensive-line-plays-last-full-contact-football-game/