Keeley Smith, 40, a 6-year football veteran who works as a consulting child-care counselor and program coordinator. Photo by Bonnie Schupp (c)
Even in a practice scrimmage, the Baltimore Burn hit hard. Photos by Bonnie Schupp (c)
By DAVID ETTLIN
Photos by BONNIE SCHUPP (c)
Off the field, they’re grandmothers and mothers. One’s a postal worker, another’s a psychiatrist. One’s in high school, another’s a teacher. On field, they’re the Baltimore Burn, representing Charm City in the 38-team Women’s Football Alliance.
They’ll be teaching the Columbus Comets a lesson in an exhibition game on Saturday April 4 at 4 pm at Baltimore’s Northwestern High School. (Tickets are $5.) Fiery football like this doesn’t come easy, though. It takes some pretty hot practice sessions…
The coach is motioning, left, left, left, as the feet move forward, back, forward, back, and left, left, left, in a sideways dance around a slalom line of plastic orange cups.
Feet dance back, right, right, right, one pair after another. The heaviest player in this conga line of athletic training falls backward in a two-foot tangle, then rises smiling from a rear landing on the hard March turf.
They’re an unlikely bunch, ages 18 to almost 50, about three dozen of them going through the rigors of spring training Saturday mornings outside Southside Academy in Cherry Hill. They have diverse backgrounds but share a dedication to their sport that was evident as the Burn assembled for practice on this day, a month before the season opens. Football season, that is.
Shoulder pads? Always in style
At an hour on Saturday when most of us are pouring our first cup of coffee, these women are donning massive shoulder pads and strapping on helmets with the flaming-orange logo of the Baltimore Burn.
“Weekend warriors,” assistant coach Steve Smith chuckles. “They have jobs, families.” And some of them even have grandchildren.
They’re part of the growing Women’s Football Alliance. It’s professional football, sort of. The teams sell tickets and merchandise, solicit sponsorships, travel hundreds of miles for games, and try not to lose money.
Up close, pro or no, it’s scary.
The offense lines up in white and red, the defense plays blue, and helmets pop audibly against each other in repeated running plays, handoff left, handoff right, and the runner is knocked to the ground, pushed, grabbed. They hit with nary an oomph or ouch. Pain is just a part of the game.
“Grab ‘em by the titties if you have to,” one veteran player is telling a small huddle around her, in an animated discussion of the game’s rough-and-tumble.
How to mortify your children
Betty Jo Salmeron is walked off to the side of the field, looking shaky after hitting the ground and twisting her neck slightly back and forth. “A little whiplash,” she says, assuring teammates she’s OK.
With her gray hair, Salmeron, “almost 49,” looks like she might be the oldest on the team – although she’s outranked by a few months in that respect by triple-threat Debra Miller, who in addition to being a defensive tackle and ninth-year player is also the team’s co-owner and general manager.
Asked what she does for a day job, Salmeron goes deep: “I’m a psychiatrist… mostly in research.”
The polite follow-up: “Do people ask if you’re nuts?”
“Of course – and I am.”
A Texas native who grew up in Rhode Island, Salmeron says she’s a veteran of backyard football from her childhood “with the neighborhood guys, my dad, my brother,” and played basketball, volleyball and softball in her high school and college days. She inquired about the team after learning that a colleague was playing.
Last year, she made the Burn roster as a rookie kicker and defensive cornerback. “They did throw at me once,” Salmeron said of a home game against the New York Nemesis, adding that the pass was completed for just one yard as she tackled the opponent who caught it. The coach was standing there as Salmeron looked up, “and he said, ‘You could have intercepted it.”
Her husband, a child psychiatrist, has been a stay-at-home dad, she says, and they have three daughters, ages 21, 17 and 13. The youngest likes football, Salmeron says. “The others are absolutely mortified.”
Grandma plays defense
Deb Miller, a Bel Air resident who also puts in time as a defensive end and on special teams, is in her ninth year with the team. She has a grown son and daughter, and six grandchildren (four girls, two boys, ages one month to six years, and “they’re all future football players”).
But even with football, that doesn’t come close to filling every minute of her life. She teaches phys-ed weekdays at Bel Air Middle School, and math and English in night classes in Aberdeen for students from adolescent to 21 who had difficulties in regular school settings.
“Sundays my time is dedicated to church,” she says.
She’s “Big T” and she plays D
Another player on the Burn roster is Tamara Johnson but she explains that “I don’t let anybody call me that.” To her teammates, she’s “Big T” and she plays defensive tackle.
She’s gone right from her overnight job as a U.S. Postal Service mail clerk to the morning practice. She operates a processing machine at work. “I run like 200,000 pieces of mail a night.”
At 27, she’s been playing eight years for the Burn. And in her spare time, she’s studying marketing through online classes from Ashworth College and a semester shy of an associate’s degree, Big T says.
Aiming high
Big T is standing on the sideline with fellow defense tackle Courtney Johnson, a 19-year-old senior at Harford County’s C. Milton Wright High School.
“My goal this year,” the younger player smiles, “is to knock somebody’s helmet off.”
She’s planning to attend Towson University, and take up mass communications. (And she’ll already know how to get someone’s attention in a hurry.)
Hurtin’ and getting hurt
“We all like hurting people,” jokes Kim “Hef” Heffington, another defensive tackle who is a mother of three. She has a 13-year-old boy, sandwiched by girls ages 18 and 11. She also helps fill up her schedule with an inside-sales job in electric motors and drives, and duties as a member of the Lake Shore Volunteer Fire Department in Pasadena, where her husband is a board officer.
She’s been on the DL with the Burn, and was looking forward to surgery three days hence when “they’re going to take out my screws.”
A knee was hit from opposing directions last May 19 in a game against the New Jersey Titans. The impact left her with a torn ACL, and damaged PCL, LCL, MCL and meniscus.
“They call it EFL,” she said – “every friggin’ ligament.”
Still, she was hoping to be back in action by the Burn’s second game – the home opener at 4 p.m. April 25 against the Philadelphia Liberty Belles at Mervo’s Art Modell Field.
“When I was growing up, girls weren’t allowed to play football,” Hef said. Instead, she became a veteran of “full-contact soccer” with a Mountain Road Optimists team.
Why football now? “I quit smoking two years ago and needed a new habit.”
It’s not a cheap habit. Hef figures she spent “a good grand” buying football gear.
Relatives are mixed in their reactions, she says. “My mom always said I wasn’t right in the head.”
We are family
Keeley Smith, 40, is a defensive end and six-year Burn veteran who works in consulting as a child-care counselor and program coordinator. Growing up, her games were basketball and softball in rec center leagues, along with flag football.
She took off from playing last year, Smith said, but missed it.
“I’m giving it a go again in 2009,” said Smith, who has a partner but no children. “It’s the love I have for the game. The Burn is like a family – a team sport. Everybody comes together as one. I enjoy that.”
The Burn’s Golden Arm
The likely starting quarterback, 29-year-old Tracy Deuber, is a rookie whose football experience to date has been on coed touch team play in a South Baltimore rec league. She plays golf, and has been a pitcher in fast-pitch softball, so she knew she can throw a ball. And she was attracted by the chance to be quarterback of a women’s team.
“I never had any quarterback experience until now,” said Deuber, whose lanky look taking the snap from center is the closest in appearance the team has to Johnny Unitas. And while she knows she could throw the ball, running plays dominate.
“We have people who can run the ball for power, and yards,” said Deuber, a Catonsville-area resident who supports herself with a sales job since her studies in communications at Mount St. Mary’s University. “We have to do with what works. It’s an absolute team, and a team in motion.”
She added: “I am definitely learning.”
Miller allows as how the team is a relative unknown, despite nearly a decade on the gridiron. “Last year we played in Annapolis, and that was too far out of the way for our fan base.”
“Other teams are making money,” she says. We just haven’t got to that stage yet. Sponsorships play a key role for every team…. The big key is we need sponsorships. It gets difficult at times – a lot of people don’t know about this.”
To see Baltimore Burn:
In addition to the Saturday practice sessions from 8 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at Southside Academy, the Burn has scheduled an exhibition game at 4 p.m. on April 4 at Baltimore’s Northwestern High School against the Columbus Comets, with tickets priced at $5.
The team opens its eight-game season on the road April 18 against the Connecticut Cyclones.
Home games – all at 4 p.m., at Mergenthaler Vocational-Technical High’s Art Modell Field – are scheduled April 25 (Philadelphia Liberty Belles), May 16 (Cyclones), June 6 (Keystone Assault) and June 20 (New Jersey Titans).
Tickets are $10, and there’s a discount for military and police, and seniors 60 and older. Season tickets are available at $30 by emailing a request to burnmob@yahoo.com. The Burn Web site is http://www.baltimoreburnfootball.com
