ATLANTA – The first thought that dances on your brain is: Women’s professional football??? What kind of women would want to play a violent sport? Let us count them. Actually, we can’t even count that high.
One of the Atlanta Ravens female football players is a married mother of four. Another woman runs up Stone Mountain in suburban Atlanta in order to get in shape. Mashonda Gilmore, the Atlanta Ravens’ VP and former player says “she really wants to play.”
Well, no kidding. I get tired just looking at that towering rock poking a hole in the sky.
Another player is a local police officer who is going through the academy by day and popping pads at night. A fourth is an Internet technology specialist who crunches numbers at the office and then crunches offensive players as the star defensive back.
A fourth woman, who is deaf, wants to play so bad, she gets her plays and instructions in sign language. Yet another wanted to play on a torn ACL. And then there is the quarterback. She has the energy of a turbo engine and talks about the game like she’s conducting a college course. Even football fanatics of the fraternal kind have to fall back and say, “whoa!”
And listen to this, they all get paid: This is professional football, folks, estrogen style — The Independent Women’s Football League — a full contact, national football league.
You close your eyes as the the running back torpedoes through the hole. You hear what sounds like a car crash. You open your eyes to observe the human wreckage and realize they are, indeed, women. Several women played, or tried to defy their parents and play, with the boys in high school. Now they are living their dreams. They don’t just love football; they are addicted to it like Chris Rock’s Pooky.
This is why head coach Mareno Philyaw agreed to coach them. The 31-year suburban Atlanta native was a 6th round Atlanta Falcons draft pick. A devastating injury robbed him 0f a career but not his love of football. Today, Philyaw, the Troy University business degree graduate, takes the team across the country in this national female football league. They mutilated the Houston Energy on opening day in Texas and then returned home to dine on the Chattanooga Locomotion 34-0 in front of a raucous crowd of 2,000. 
If you don’t know them yet, then you aren’t aware of how prolific they are. They have multiple IWFL championships and have won scores of conference titles. And it looks like they are on their way again.
–terry shropshire
Tickets for the game are $7, kids ages 6 and under admitted free. Group ticket pricing is available. Contact Mashonda Gilmore at 678-949-1010 for more information or visit atlantaravensfootball.com.
