Sports junkies who voraciously keep up with all the latest in MLB, the NFL, and the NBA have another league they can follow: the IWFL. That’s the Independent Women’s Football League, an association of 50 women’s tackle football teams.
Yep, that’s right: tackle football. Not flag, not touch. Tackle. Nearly 2,000 women play in the league, including Secaucus resident Toni Salvatore, a defensive back with the New York Sharks.
“There’s no difference between an IWFL game and an NFL game,” Salvatore said last week. “Our football field is the same dimensions as an NFL field. We follow the same rules that they follow. The only difference is, we’re females.”
The New York Sharks, the IWFL’s local franchise, launched in 2000.
“Last year we played some exhibition football during halftime at a Giants game and we got a tremendous response from the crowd.” – Toni Salvatore
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Tried out
Ten years ago, Salvatore said, “I saw a newspaper ad for a [Sharks] tryout. So I decided to try out and I made the team.”
Athletic throughout her youth, Salvatore grew up playing softball, basketball, and volleyball in high school. While attending Jersey City State, where she majored in elementary education and psychology, Salvatore played softball and volleyball.
“I had played flag football and street football with my older brother and kids at school,” she said. “But other than that, football wasn’t a sport I really played growing up.”
That’s due partly to the fact that, unlike volleyball, softball, and several other sports, there are fewer avenues for little girls and young women to play scholastic football from elementary school through college.
“Girls and women in college can choose to walk on and try out for boys’ teams,” she explained, “and there are women who have done that.”
She pointed to Katie Hnida, who in the late 1990s was a kicker at the University of Colorado. After leaving Colorado, Hnida became a place-kicker for the University of New Mexico.
“There are a number of others who’ve done that,” Salvatore said. “They’ve been kickers on men’s teams. So there are opportunities, but it’s hard to play with the boys.”
Yet all-girl’s and all-women’s teams are few and far between.
The IWFL, and the 50 teams in the league, hopes to change that.
Each winter, the New York Sharks host a football camp for girls to get them interested in the game and to give them the same practice and skills development that boys get.
The IWFL hopes that such camps, and the league itself, will ultimately generate a full-fledged professional women’s football league that’s on par with the NFL, in much the same way the WNBA seeks to become the women’s counterpart to the NBA.
Salvatore said there’s already a growing appetite for professional women’s football. The Sharks, one of the top five teams in the IWFL, attracts anywhere from 200 to 500 fans to their games.
“A couple years ago, we played some exhibition football during halftime at a Dallas Cowboys-Giants game. We played in front of 30,000 people and we got a tremendous response from the crowd,” she said. “The fans just loved it. After the game we got a lot of really positive feedback from the fans. It felt great. So, I think the interest is already there. It’s just a matter of building on that interest.”
Sharks in Secaucus
Currently, the IWFL is trying to show corporate heads that there’s enough interest among diehard football fans for them to sponsor games and teams. But so far that has been a tough sell. Far from having multi-million-dollar contracts, IWFL players still have day jobs and play on a volunteer basis. Tickets to IWFL games cost between $5 and $25, and the money generated from ticket sales goes back into the team for uniforms, travel expenses, etc. Preseason begins in February, with games running from April through July.
Salvatore, for example, works as a physical education and health teacher in the Somerville school district. She also volunteers locally with the Secaucus Recreation Department. (It was through Salvatore’s connection with the Secaucus Recreation Center that the Sharks were able to use the field at Kane Stadium for practices.)
Having a day job during game season, she said, is tough because of the travel. But she believes that, down the line, the sacrifice will pay off.
“If my son wanted to play football when he gets older there are already opportunities for him to play,” Salvatore, the mother of two children with her partner Donna, noted. “Hopefully, now if my daughter decided she wanted to play football, too, she’ll have the same opportunities.”
E-mail E. Assata Wright at awright@hudsonreporter.com.