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by
Jeff Collaso “Full Contact” follows the smash-mouth first season of the Women’s Professional Football team the Long Beach Aftershock. In a time when women’s sports are not just accepted but celebrated, women’s football is barely on the radar. Is it because we feel that it is too hard to watch our delicate flowers participate in a sport so widely revered for its brutality? How would you feel about your daughter / wife / mother being sent across the middle with a linebacker waiting to greet her? The journey begins at the start of a new season with a new head coach. The Aftershock are a band of women so diverse that it is sometimes hard to see why they would want to play football at all, until you hear them speak. They are not a rag-tag bunch at all and their collective voice shows this as it carries a passion for the game, a desire to learn and improve, and yet a need to be heard and respected.
The team is lead by a
stellar quarterback in Mary Margaret. She has grown up with the
game, understands its intricacies, and can hang tougher in the
pocket then some of her professional male counterparts. And one more
thing, she can air it out, which clashes with her coach’s
conservative approach of having a dominant running game. Juice,
Kelley & A-Train are
the team’s running backs. They are full of talent and their play
helps bolster Coach’s determination to run the football. But
most players are learning as they go, including the coach.
He is a former football player whose days on the field were cut
short due to injury. Though his playing days are over, his love for
the game never ends. His toughness is only out measured by his
desire to stay connected to the game by passing on his knowledge of
football and his passion to win. |
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