News

Fighting Fillies In The News!

• Oregon State Bar Bulletin – February 2010: Gridiron Gal: Shannon Wilson Finds Joy and Release Playing Football  By Cliff Collins 

Bam! Smash! Boom!

It’s Shannon I. Wilson for the defense, aiming to lead a team to victory.

But this is no courtroom scene. Instead, Wilson is an intimidating linebacker who “goes after it,” as her coach puts it.

Wilson, a Portland lawyer, spends many of her off hours as a key member of the Portland Fighting Fillies, a women’s professional football team organized last fall.

• (Read more at the link above!)

• Oregonian Newspaper – December 9, 2009: Fighting Fillies play for the love of football By Jenn Director Knudsen

Growing up in an industrial Pennsylvania town, Karla Fisher always played full-contact football with her brothers and male cousins.
“I was fearless. In open-field tackle, I could knock down anybody,” says Fisher, as she twists a football in her hands.
She never suspected that the very physical sport was the province only of boys and men. Until junior high, when she tried out for her school’s team.
“I was actually ridiculed off the field by the coach and the team,” says Fisher, who now lives in Southeast Portland. “I never played again.”
That is, until she saw an ad for tryouts for the Portland Fighting Fillies team, a member of the Women’s Football Alliance.

(Read more at the link above!)

• Yamhill Valley News Register – September 30, 2009: Joining a new football frontier By Whitney Bermes

TIGARD — On a cool, late-summer evening, coach Lyn Lumley held tryouts for his start-up football squad.

Eight eager participants showed up to the audition, eagerly running through drills typical of the NFL combine — sit-ups, pushups, sprints, strength and balance tests, long runs.

The atmosphere was jovial, coaches encouraging, players energetic.

But as the coaching staff’s shirts said, football isn’t just for boys.

 

                                                              (Read more at the link above!)

• The Forest Grove News-Times – September 2, 2009: New women’s football team gets start in Forest Grove By John Schrag

Lyn Lumley says that if someone had told him at the outset of his coaching career he’d one day be holding football tryouts for women, he would have laughed.

“Women didn’t play football 25 years ago,” said Lumley, a longtime fixture on the California and Oregon prep football scene.

But women are playing full-contact football now, and the Portland Fighting Fillies are poised to join the Women’s Football Alliance next season, joining 45 other teams in the semi-professional league.

(Read more at the link above!)