First Black Girl to Get a Football Scholarship
FAYETTE, Mo. — Perhaps you've heard of Antoinette "Toni" Harris. Earlier this year, the 23-year-old became what is believed to be the first woman to accept a scholarship to play football at a four-year college — not as a kicker, as other women have done — but as a position player.
Harris, a free safety, signed with Central Methodist University, a school with 1,000 undergraduates that plays in Division I of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA). She's arrived on campus three weeks ahead of camp to get extra time with the strength and conditioning coach. And, like everyone else on the team, she's hoping to see some playing time when the season starts on Aug. 31.
Fayette is a dot on the map between St. Louis and Kansas City, a four-block town surrounded by cornfields and soybean farms. On a sweltering Sunday morning in July, the women at Savory Bakery are serving coffee and tea as the radio pipes in The Platters singing "The Magic Touch," a song that hasn't seen the Billboard charts since 1956.
We're two blocks from town, in the center of Central Methodist's campus, with Harris, head coach David Calloway and defensive backs coach LaQuentin "Q" Black in Calloway's office on the second floor of Brannock Hall, one of the oldest buildings on campus. Harris' hair is pulled back into a tight ponytail. She's wearing a "Women are Dope" T-shirt and has a diamond stud in her left nostril. She stands only 5 feet, 7 inches tall, but her 165-pound frame is rock-solid.
Central Methodist head coach David Calloway, left, and defensive backs coach LaQuentin Black, right, both view Toni Harris as a budding talent who has the skills, aptitude and eagerness to develop.
Neeta Satam for The Undefeated
She didn't play for her high school varsity team and only sparingly during two years of junior college. Her demeanor isn't that of a sports star but of a wide-eyed college student. But Toni Harris is famous.
"There have been so many women — I can't even count, like over probably 100 or 200 — that contact me every day, whether in middle school, high school or getting ready to go to college, that want to play [football] at the next level," she says. "They say I'm an inspiration and ask if I have any tips on how they can become better football players. I tell them to just keep pushing and working hard, and just never give up believing in yourself."
The world discovered Harris over the course of 60 seconds on Feb. 3. During Super Bowl LIII, Toyota debuted a commercial featuring her and her quest to play football. Tens of millions of viewers saw Harris running, training, lifting weights and driving a Toyota.
"They've said a lot of things about Toni Harris," intones narrator Jim Nantz. "They said she was too small. They said she was too slow. Too weak. They said she'd never get to the next level. Never inspire a new generation. Never get a football scholarship. Yeah, people have made a lot of assumptions about Toni."
Harris then looks into the camera and delivers the closing line, the one she proudly says she wrote herself, the one that sums up her remarkable journey.
"I've never been a big fan of assumptions."
It would have been easy to write off the young Harris when she was growing up on the west side of Detroit. Placed in foster care at the age of 4, she ended up in three different homes by the age of 15.
"You don't really see anything wrong with it until you're older," she says. "I wanted to see my mother and I wanted to know who my father was. But I was always one of those kids who was very optimistic. I had my faith and believed in a lot of things that were positive."
Harris met her biological father, Sam Clora, four years ago. He is now a part of her life, as are her nine biological siblings (five sisters and four brothers). But her birth mother, Donyale Harris, with whom she always maintained a relationship, died in a car accident this past spring.
Facing obstacles is nothing new for Toni Harris. At 4 years old, she was placed in foster care. And in her freshman year in college at Toledo, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.
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One of Harris' obstacles was simply getting onto a football field. She became infatuated with the sport when was 5 years old, watching her older cousin Demetrius and the Westside Steelers win the national Police Athletic League (PAL) championship.
As Harris remembers it, what she saw on the field that day was a happy, teary-eyed family. "After that, I kind of fell in love with the game of football and never put the ball down."
With no PAL team willing to accept her, she picked up the game on her own, watching others and playing in neighborhood pickup games. She finally talked her way onto the junior varsity squad at Redford Union High School in suburban Detroit. She was the only girl on the team and played wide receiver and cornerback. (She was also a cheerleader, which is, ironically, how she suffered her worst athletic injury, a bruised knee.) But in the midst of transitioning to senior varsity, she was booted from the team.
"The athletic director [Mike Humitz, who passed away in January] told me he didn't want to let me play," Harris recalled. "He said, basically, football was a man's sport and I shouldn't be out there. And he was being really sarcastic. He was like, 'So what's your next sport? Boys' basketball? Men's wrestling?' "
Actually, Harris did have a plan: playing in college. She enrolled at the University of Toledo intending to walk onto the team. But fate dealt her another blow. In her freshman year, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.
"Because of the radiation I had lost the back of my hair and my body was very weak, and most of the time I wasn't able to go to school. At first, I was gonna stop playing football, but then I was like, you know, if I can beat this, then what else can I overcome?" — Toni Harris, on dealing with cancer
"The chemo was really hard to handle because my body went from 170 pounds to 90 pounds," she says. "The chemo was worse than the cancer was. Because of the radiation I had lost the back of my hair and my body was very weak, and most of the time I wasn't able to go to school. At first, I was gonna stop playing football, but then I was like, you know, if I can beat this, then what else can I overcome? And so just after the chemotherapy, that's when I decided to go back to football and try to gain back my weight."
We can't help but ask how she absorbs these gut punches. She's taken so many.
"I think God gives his toughest battles to his strongest soldiers, and I feel as though I'm one of God's stronger soldiers," Harris says. "So I feel like I can overcome anything that's thrown my way."
Harris enrolled at Golden West College, a community college in Huntington Beach, California, south of Los Angeles. There, she was thwarted in her efforts to play football when head coach Nick Mitchell turned her down.
"She tried out for the team [as a wide receiver and defensive back], but didn't make it," Mitchell said in a phone call with The Undefeated. "I didn't think she was ready for the collegiate level. It had nothing to do with her being female."
Harris then tried women's soccer, but it didn't scratch her itch for football. So she signed up at East Los Angeles College (ELAC) while still enrolled at Golden West and pursued (and ultimately earned) two associate's degrees simultaneously: one in social and behavioral sciences, the other in criminal justice. At ELAC, she badgered head football coach Bobby Godinez to put her on the team. And, eventually, he caved.
But Harris didn't just want a uniform, she wanted to play. After everything she'd already been hit with, how much harder could she get slammed on the field?
"She wouldn't accept no as an answer," Godinez says on the phone with The Undefeated. "[But] my 'no' was out of fear. Having a daughter myself, I was nervous about what the repercussions could be. You have injuries at a high, high level in this sport. But I did tell her that if she sticks around and she proves that she belongs, things could change."
Harris never missed practice, never missed a meeting, never missed the weight room.
"She was very, very persistent with her goals, and she wouldn't give up," Godinez says. "And when it came down to it, her teammates were the ones who said, 'This girl belongs here.' "
That moment came in Week 2 of her first season. As Godinez recalls, "A defensive lineman approached me and said, 'Coach, give her a jersey, she deserves it.' " Harris rarely got on the field that season but still got a scholarship offer from Bethany College, an NAIA school in Kansas. She elected to stay at ELAC, and as a sophomore she played in three games, in which she broke up a pass and made three tackles, including one for a 24-yard loss.
She put those highlights on video and sent them off to four-year programs in the hopes of catching a coach's eye.
"I don't even know how many schools [I sent to]," Harris says. "Probably over 200."
The timing couldn't have been better. Harris' highlight video went out right before the Super Bowl and the Toyota commercial. Suddenly, the media was championing the young woman who was challenging stereotypes and defying assumptions. Radio hosts talked about her. Good Morning America and The Today Show featured her in prime guest spots.
The gamble to stay at ELAC had paid off. Now she had scholarship offers from five more colleges — one a Division II school in the NCAA, the others in NAIA.
But only one of those coaches impressed her: Calloway at Central Methodist. He'd been there before the hoopla, emailing her, phoning her, recruiting her. And he'd always been straight with her.
"He wasn't one of those coaches who was promising you things," Harris says. "I think what attracted me to this school, to this coach, was him telling me, 'You're gonna have to work for your spot.' "
Calloway was a four-year starter at Langston University in Oklahoma, graduating in 1997, and has spent 21 years coaching at the collegiate level. At Central Methodist, he faces an uphill battle. Since he took over as head coach in 2016, the Eagles have gone 8-24. But judging from all of the thank-you notes from former players and students pinned to his corkboard, Calloway is a patient and supportive coach who has generated a reservoir of goodwill.
Calloway leans back in his swivel chair and we ask the obvious question: How did it feel to make history? We're surprised to hear Calloway say he figured some other female athlete had already done it.
"[Making history] never crossed my radar," Calloway says. "I assumed somebody had already kicked or something."
Central Methodist head coach David Calloway says Harris will be fighting for her position in the defensive backfield with a three-year starter and another junior college transfer.
Neeta Satam for The Undefeated
In fact, several women have kicked for four-year schools since Liz Heaston did so for Willamette University in 1997, becoming the first woman ever to score in a college football game. Others include Ashley Martin at Jacksonville State, Katie Hnida at Colorado and New Mexico, and April Goss at Kent State. But not one received a scholarship to a four-year school at the Division II level or higher until 2018, when Rebecca Longo signed to kick for Adams State in Colorado. (Shelby Osborne, a defensive back, signed with Campbellsville University in Kentucky in 2014, but she was not initially on scholarship.)
And now Harris is "the first female incoming student to receive a football scholarship as a position player," says Jennifer Saab, director of communications at the NAIA.
So if Calloway didn't intend to make history, why did he recruit Harris? He said he sees his role as giving young people opportunities, not just to play football but to graduate. He views Harris as a budding talent, one with skill, an aptitude for the game and an eagerness to develop.
Coach Q agrees. "Her feet are really good and she's quick out of her breaks," he says. "When you're bringing someone on in the [defensive] back end, you want someone that you feel can lead and take charge, and I haven't seen anything different from her. We'll see if she's coachable once we get her on the football field and in the meeting rooms, but so far, so good."
If Harris takes the field this season, isn't she bound to run into guys, big guys, who don't think she belongs there?
Calloway doesn't seem concerned.
"[Think about] what she's been through in life," he says. "Football's probably not gonna be that tough when all is said and done. Having beat cancer at a young age, and then growing up in foster homes and then maintaining a great attitude through all of it, I think that's gonna help. That's what I [see] from a character standpoint. When she puts her mind to things, she can get stuff accomplished."
Harris has what it takes to withstand any pushback on the playing field, Calloway says. "You read on social media, 'I will run her over,' " he says. "She's not gonna just sit there and let you run her over. She has more sense than that. She understands she's on the field with 21 other guys. We're putting her in position to make proper tackles."
"[Think about] what she's been through in life. Football's probably not gonna be that tough when all is said and done. Having beat cancer at a young age, and then growing up in foster homes and then maintaining a great attitude through all of it, I think that's gonna help." — Central Methodist head coach David Calloway
When the hits come, Harris is convinced she'll be ready. "I don't feel like it's out of the norm for me to be playing with men," she says. "I mean, [former NFL wide receiver] Trindon Holliday was 135 pounds and 5-6, and I'm much bigger. … Football is about being mentally strong. Are you mentally ready when somebody catches a pass on you? Are you mentally ready to get over that and go to the next play?"
It remains to be seen whether Harris will be on the field against Clarke University on Aug. 31. Calloway makes it clear that she'll be fighting for her position with a three-year starter and another junior college transfer.
But, as Harris has demonstrated before, competition only feeds her drive.
"I don't expect anything to be easy," she says. "It's never going to get easier. If anything, it's going to get harder every day."
That's probably true, especially if she follows her dream to play in the NFL. If she doesn't make it to the pros, would she consider playing in one of the women's semipro or amateur leagues around the country?
"If they made a women's NFL, then yes," she says. "I know people play recreationally, but I want to get paid to play just like anybody else. I want a career. So if they don't plan on putting in a WNFL then I'll be seeking other things and other ways to make money."
After meeting Harris, we try not to assume she'll do it all — take the field on opening day, intercept a pass. And we try not to fantasize that one day she'll live her dream and put on an NFL uniform.
It's not easy, because she's so easy to root for.
John Florio and Ouisie Shapiro are the authors of 'One Nation Under Baseball: How the 1960s Collided with the National Pastime,' and 'One Punch from the Promised Land: Leon Spinks, Michael Spinks, and the Myth of the Heavyweight Title.' They have also written the young adult book, 'War in the Ring: Joe Louis, Max Schmeling, and the Fight Between America and Hitler.'
First Black Girl to Get a Football Scholarship
Source: https://theundefeated.com/features/antoinette-harris-made-history-by-getting-a-football-scholarship-central-methodist-university/