Maine finally has a professional sport, and it is women’s football.
The Maine Freeze is in the Eastern Division of the NWFL (National Women’s Football League). The league was formed in August 2000, but this is the first season for the Maine Freeze.
USM is represented on the team by three students, an alumna, and a professor.
Allison Brooks, senior exercise physiology major, has been a cornerback for the Freeze for three weeks, but in the first exhibition game in Rochester two weeks ago she deflected a pass in the first play of the game.
Karen Mercier graduated from USM in 1997 with a bachelor’s degree in business administration. She is an offensive tackle for the Freeze, and has been with the team for nearly a year.
“After practicing for a year and building the team, it is exciting to play against people other than our own team,” she said.
Tyanita “Ty” Ferrell, sociology major, is a linebacker with extensive contact sport experience. She played rugby in New Zealand where, she explained, if the local team loses it is considered a “national emergency and people don’t go to work for two weeks.”
She has incredible spunk both on and off the field, and keeps the team in good spirits.
Sports medicine Professor Chris Beaudoin is a running back on the team, and her sports medicine background also helps her team in an athletic-trainer capacity, for instance, helping teammates tape ankles.
Kerry Kiernan, junior education major with intentions to enroll in the ETEP program and sociology, is a fullback for the Freeze. In 1986 she was the first girl in the state of Maine to play football on a boy’s high school team.
“I only did it because they said I couldn’t,” she remembers.
Kiernan also coaches for the Sanford Girls’ Little League, and is vice president of the division.
Kiernan feels strongly that this is a big step for women in athletics in Maine.
“I want peoples to know it has nothing to do with being butch, or sexual orientation. You can be a woman, a mom, feminine.
“When you put the pads on you are a football player, when you take them off you are a woman. Respect us as athletes, and it doesn’t matter what goes on in our own personal lives.