3afan
11-02-2005, 08:02 AM
At heart of the team, a girl
It's called six-man football, but that's not stopping her
09:42 PM CST on Tuesday, November 1, 2005
By BRYAN WOOLLEY / The Dallas Morning News
PAINT CREEK, Texas – This sunny Friday afternoon, during the seventh period of their day, Paint Creek School's 99 students, kindergarten through grade 12, have gathered in the bleachers. On the edge of the playing field, four cheerleaders in short maroon-and-white skirts bounce and scream, ratcheting the Pirates' pep for their impending battle against the Jayton Jaybirds.
The players in their game jerseys sit along a bench, basking. There are eight of them.
As the cheerleaders cool, one of the players, No. 82, rises, unfolds a paper and reads:
"So far this year, we've been working hard! The work we put forward helped us win against Moran three weeks ago! We hope we can do the same tonight! So I say we go out there and whup us some Jaybirds!"
A voice from the bleachers cries: "Wooo! Alice! Get 'em, girl!"
Alice Blair, a 16-year-old sophomore, plays offensive and defensive end for the Paint Creek Pirates. She isn't the first Texas girl to suit up for a school's six-man football team. A few have played in the past, and it's rumored a few are on the field now at other tiny schools such as Paint Creek, where even a six-man team can be hard to gather.
"I've heard of girls who have played, mostly in junior high," Coach Russ Wilson says. "At that age, some of the girls are bigger than the boys. But to have girls play high school varsity is kind of different."
Of Paint Creek's 99 students, 41 are in high school. And some of the boys just don't want to play. This season, which ends Friday night, is Alice's second. If she weren't in uniform, Coach Wilson says, there have been weeks when the Pirates couldn't have fielded a team at all.
In helmet and pads, Alice is as wide as most of the players, but she's only 5-foot-3. Opposing players and fans always know when she's on the field. They call out to her: "Princess!" "Barbie Girl!" "Babe!"
"You can hear the crowd," says Pirates quarterback Brandon Bryant. "They make fun of us, calling us 'girlie defense,' you know. They treat her a little rougher than they do the rest of us. I wouldn't say they're out hunting for her, but they don't take it easy on her, either. She takes some hard licks. She's got a lot of heart."
Nearly all the Pirates – Charlie Myers, Rusty Rogers, Caleb Whitfield, Kyle Brown, Michael Bailiff – mention heart when they talk of Alice. And when they speak of themselves, too. They've got to have heart.
Smaller than small
Paint Creek isn't a town, or even a village. It isn't on the maps. There's no post office, no gas station, no cafe. There's only the tiny Paint Creek Baptist Church and its parsonage and, across FM600, the school.
The original dun-brick part of the school was built as a WPA project in the 1930s, when several one-room country schools banded together. Years later, a brown-brick addition was built, and after that, another, out of aluminum. The students arrive each morning on four buses. Among them, in the 1960s, was Rick Perry, current governor of Texas. He graduated in '68. He played football.
Alongside the school building is the grassy field and the two small bleachers, enough for maybe 100 spectators each. Beyond the bleachers, across a wire fence, is a cotton field, white unto harvest. Wide sky and rolling plains, featureless and vast, surround the school for miles. Through the countryside runs the creek, which got its name from the red soil that colors its water. Haskell is eight miles to the northwest, Stamford about the same distance to the southwest. Farther, about 60 miles south, is Abilene.
"When we started two-a-days in August," says Coach Wilson, "we had only five players come out. One of them was Alice." Another was her freshman sister, Ariel.This is Mr. Wilson's first year at Paint Creek and his first as a full-time coach. But he grew up in rural West Texas and has loved six-man football all his life.
"I've never been around 11-man," he says. "I wouldn't even know how to coach it."
By the season's beginning, Mr. Wilson had accumulated only seven players, including Alice and Ariel. Loss of interest, injury or illness, or failing grades can quickly reduce a team of seven to fewer than six. That means no team, no games and humiliating forfeits.
The Pirates lost big to their first opponents, Guthrie (30-0) and Benjamin (54-8). In the third week, when Paint Creek met the Moran Bulldogs, only five boys were wearing the maroon and white, plus the Blair girls.
Inexperienced Ariel, 14 years old, was the only substitute. Alice was on the field for every play on both offense and defense. And Paint Creek won, 61-55.
No joke
"I was proud of her, man," says running back Abel Cisneros. "When she started last year, some of the guys were like 'Aww!' But now she's, like, part of the boys. I don't mind her having my back. I think she's pretty cool, man."
Alice had begun her freshman year as a cheerleader. Then one day she went home and announced she wanted to try out for football.
"I told her she could do anything she wanted to do," says her father, Nathan Blair. "A girl can do anything a man can. I've always told my daughters that. If they think they're big enough to do it, then there ain't anything they can't do."
Alice had been playing football with her cousins since childhood and is a member of the school's girls basketball, tennis, golf and track teams.
When she asked to join the football team, last year's coach, Paul Cotton, thought she was joking.
"But he gave me the physical examination form and the permission form," she says. "I got them filled out and brought them to him. He said, 'You're serious, aren't you?' And I said, 'Yes, sir, I am.' And he said, 'OK, let's get you suited up.' "
"She was so adamant," says school superintendent Don Ballard. "Her mom and dad didn't have a problem with it. She didn't get a lot of playing time, but she came back this year.
"Ariel said she wanted to play, too. I don't know whether she really wanted to play or was trying to follow in the footsteps of her sister." In the middle of the season, Ariel quit.
"I just didn't feel like I was good at it," Ariel says.
The sisters are only 19 months apart in age and often are mistaken for twins. "But they're two different individuals," Mrs. Blair says. "Ariel is not quite as tough as Alice."
"Alice is strong," says her close friend, Melanie Bishop. "She doesn't cry about anything."
Tough year
Like many tiny schools, Paint Creek is having a tough football year. After the Moran victory, they lost to Megargel (54-38) and to district powerhouse Rule (59-0). Under the "mercy rule" or "slaughter rule" of six-man football, when a team owns a 45-point lead at halftime or later, the game's declared over. The Rule game ended at halftime.
Coach Wilson had hoped to field nine players for the Jayton game, but one fell ineligible because of bad grades. Another got kicked out of the game early for unsportsmanlike conduct.
Alice puts in a lot of playing time.
A woman in the stands screams: "Come on, boys ... and girl!"
Brandon Bryant, taking a breather on the sideline, shouts: "Hit somebody, Alice! Hit somebody!"
But Jayton has 13 players to grapple with Paint Creek's remaining seven. The overworked Pirates are weary. With five and a half minutes remaining in the third quarter, a Jaybird intercepts a pass and dashes into the end zone. The score goes to 46-0. The slaughter rule kicks in again.
The little bleachers quickly empty. Truck headlights cut swaths across the dark schoolyard. Seven disconsolate boys in maroon trudge toward their field-house showers. Alice walks alone to the girls restroom at the school.
"She's not as fast and strong as the boys," Coach Wilson says of her. "But when I put her in for a guy, I don't notice much difference. She gets pushed around a little, but she gets back up and keeps going. I can tell she's hustling."
The next week was homecoming. The Pirates beat Lueders-Avoca, 44-19.
E-mail bwoolley@dallasnews.com
----------
FEWER PLAYERS, FASTER GAME
Six-man football was invented in 1934 by Stephen E. Epler, the coach at Chester High School in Nebraska. He was looking for a way for tiny schools with few boys to play football.
The team that he devised features a center, two ends and three backs. Most of the game rules are the same as for 11-man football, but there are important differences:
A six-man football field is 80 yards long and 40 wide, instead of 100 yards long and 50 wide. The goal-post uprights are 25 feet apart, not 23, and their crossbars are 9 feet high, not 10.
Each quarter of play is 10 minutes, not 12. The ball must be moved 15 yards for a first down, not 10. A field goal counts four points, not three. The scoring for extra points is reversed – a kick is worth two points, a run or pass is worth one.
The quarterback, or whoever takes the ball from the center, can't run across the line of scrimmage with the ball unless he hands off to another player and then receives it back. Also, any member of the team is eligible to receive a forward pass.
These rules make for a fast, open game in which a player's speed and agility are more valuable than size and physical strength. High scores are common.
It's called six-man football, but that's not stopping her
09:42 PM CST on Tuesday, November 1, 2005
By BRYAN WOOLLEY / The Dallas Morning News
PAINT CREEK, Texas – This sunny Friday afternoon, during the seventh period of their day, Paint Creek School's 99 students, kindergarten through grade 12, have gathered in the bleachers. On the edge of the playing field, four cheerleaders in short maroon-and-white skirts bounce and scream, ratcheting the Pirates' pep for their impending battle against the Jayton Jaybirds.
The players in their game jerseys sit along a bench, basking. There are eight of them.
As the cheerleaders cool, one of the players, No. 82, rises, unfolds a paper and reads:
"So far this year, we've been working hard! The work we put forward helped us win against Moran three weeks ago! We hope we can do the same tonight! So I say we go out there and whup us some Jaybirds!"
A voice from the bleachers cries: "Wooo! Alice! Get 'em, girl!"
Alice Blair, a 16-year-old sophomore, plays offensive and defensive end for the Paint Creek Pirates. She isn't the first Texas girl to suit up for a school's six-man football team. A few have played in the past, and it's rumored a few are on the field now at other tiny schools such as Paint Creek, where even a six-man team can be hard to gather.
"I've heard of girls who have played, mostly in junior high," Coach Russ Wilson says. "At that age, some of the girls are bigger than the boys. But to have girls play high school varsity is kind of different."
Of Paint Creek's 99 students, 41 are in high school. And some of the boys just don't want to play. This season, which ends Friday night, is Alice's second. If she weren't in uniform, Coach Wilson says, there have been weeks when the Pirates couldn't have fielded a team at all.
In helmet and pads, Alice is as wide as most of the players, but she's only 5-foot-3. Opposing players and fans always know when she's on the field. They call out to her: "Princess!" "Barbie Girl!" "Babe!"
"You can hear the crowd," says Pirates quarterback Brandon Bryant. "They make fun of us, calling us 'girlie defense,' you know. They treat her a little rougher than they do the rest of us. I wouldn't say they're out hunting for her, but they don't take it easy on her, either. She takes some hard licks. She's got a lot of heart."
Nearly all the Pirates – Charlie Myers, Rusty Rogers, Caleb Whitfield, Kyle Brown, Michael Bailiff – mention heart when they talk of Alice. And when they speak of themselves, too. They've got to have heart.
Smaller than small
Paint Creek isn't a town, or even a village. It isn't on the maps. There's no post office, no gas station, no cafe. There's only the tiny Paint Creek Baptist Church and its parsonage and, across FM600, the school.
The original dun-brick part of the school was built as a WPA project in the 1930s, when several one-room country schools banded together. Years later, a brown-brick addition was built, and after that, another, out of aluminum. The students arrive each morning on four buses. Among them, in the 1960s, was Rick Perry, current governor of Texas. He graduated in '68. He played football.
Alongside the school building is the grassy field and the two small bleachers, enough for maybe 100 spectators each. Beyond the bleachers, across a wire fence, is a cotton field, white unto harvest. Wide sky and rolling plains, featureless and vast, surround the school for miles. Through the countryside runs the creek, which got its name from the red soil that colors its water. Haskell is eight miles to the northwest, Stamford about the same distance to the southwest. Farther, about 60 miles south, is Abilene.
"When we started two-a-days in August," says Coach Wilson, "we had only five players come out. One of them was Alice." Another was her freshman sister, Ariel.This is Mr. Wilson's first year at Paint Creek and his first as a full-time coach. But he grew up in rural West Texas and has loved six-man football all his life.
"I've never been around 11-man," he says. "I wouldn't even know how to coach it."
By the season's beginning, Mr. Wilson had accumulated only seven players, including Alice and Ariel. Loss of interest, injury or illness, or failing grades can quickly reduce a team of seven to fewer than six. That means no team, no games and humiliating forfeits.
The Pirates lost big to their first opponents, Guthrie (30-0) and Benjamin (54-8). In the third week, when Paint Creek met the Moran Bulldogs, only five boys were wearing the maroon and white, plus the Blair girls.
Inexperienced Ariel, 14 years old, was the only substitute. Alice was on the field for every play on both offense and defense. And Paint Creek won, 61-55.
No joke
"I was proud of her, man," says running back Abel Cisneros. "When she started last year, some of the guys were like 'Aww!' But now she's, like, part of the boys. I don't mind her having my back. I think she's pretty cool, man."
Alice had begun her freshman year as a cheerleader. Then one day she went home and announced she wanted to try out for football.
"I told her she could do anything she wanted to do," says her father, Nathan Blair. "A girl can do anything a man can. I've always told my daughters that. If they think they're big enough to do it, then there ain't anything they can't do."
Alice had been playing football with her cousins since childhood and is a member of the school's girls basketball, tennis, golf and track teams.
When she asked to join the football team, last year's coach, Paul Cotton, thought she was joking.
"But he gave me the physical examination form and the permission form," she says. "I got them filled out and brought them to him. He said, 'You're serious, aren't you?' And I said, 'Yes, sir, I am.' And he said, 'OK, let's get you suited up.' "
"She was so adamant," says school superintendent Don Ballard. "Her mom and dad didn't have a problem with it. She didn't get a lot of playing time, but she came back this year.
"Ariel said she wanted to play, too. I don't know whether she really wanted to play or was trying to follow in the footsteps of her sister." In the middle of the season, Ariel quit.
"I just didn't feel like I was good at it," Ariel says.
The sisters are only 19 months apart in age and often are mistaken for twins. "But they're two different individuals," Mrs. Blair says. "Ariel is not quite as tough as Alice."
"Alice is strong," says her close friend, Melanie Bishop. "She doesn't cry about anything."
Tough year
Like many tiny schools, Paint Creek is having a tough football year. After the Moran victory, they lost to Megargel (54-38) and to district powerhouse Rule (59-0). Under the "mercy rule" or "slaughter rule" of six-man football, when a team owns a 45-point lead at halftime or later, the game's declared over. The Rule game ended at halftime.
Coach Wilson had hoped to field nine players for the Jayton game, but one fell ineligible because of bad grades. Another got kicked out of the game early for unsportsmanlike conduct.
Alice puts in a lot of playing time.
A woman in the stands screams: "Come on, boys ... and girl!"
Brandon Bryant, taking a breather on the sideline, shouts: "Hit somebody, Alice! Hit somebody!"
But Jayton has 13 players to grapple with Paint Creek's remaining seven. The overworked Pirates are weary. With five and a half minutes remaining in the third quarter, a Jaybird intercepts a pass and dashes into the end zone. The score goes to 46-0. The slaughter rule kicks in again.
The little bleachers quickly empty. Truck headlights cut swaths across the dark schoolyard. Seven disconsolate boys in maroon trudge toward their field-house showers. Alice walks alone to the girls restroom at the school.
"She's not as fast and strong as the boys," Coach Wilson says of her. "But when I put her in for a guy, I don't notice much difference. She gets pushed around a little, but she gets back up and keeps going. I can tell she's hustling."
The next week was homecoming. The Pirates beat Lueders-Avoca, 44-19.
E-mail bwoolley@dallasnews.com
----------
FEWER PLAYERS, FASTER GAME
Six-man football was invented in 1934 by Stephen E. Epler, the coach at Chester High School in Nebraska. He was looking for a way for tiny schools with few boys to play football.
The team that he devised features a center, two ends and three backs. Most of the game rules are the same as for 11-man football, but there are important differences:
A six-man football field is 80 yards long and 40 wide, instead of 100 yards long and 50 wide. The goal-post uprights are 25 feet apart, not 23, and their crossbars are 9 feet high, not 10.
Each quarter of play is 10 minutes, not 12. The ball must be moved 15 yards for a first down, not 10. A field goal counts four points, not three. The scoring for extra points is reversed – a kick is worth two points, a run or pass is worth one.
The quarterback, or whoever takes the ball from the center, can't run across the line of scrimmage with the ball unless he hands off to another player and then receives it back. Also, any member of the team is eligible to receive a forward pass.
These rules make for a fast, open game in which a player's speed and agility are more valuable than size and physical strength. High scores are common.