Making history doesn’t always mean walking on the moon, going fast enough to break the sound barrier or becoming the first female aviator to fly across the Atlantic Ocean.
Sometimes it’s as simple as becoming the first female to take the field in a Power Five conference football game.
So that’s what Vanderbilt’s Sarah Fuller did at the start of Saturday’s second half at Missouri, launching her powerful right foot into a kickoff during the Commodores’ otherwise depressing 41-0 loss. It wasn’t anything spectacular, other than the fact that young women everywhere might justifiably feel spectacular pride in shattering yet another glass ceiling exactly 25 days after Kamala Harris, as Joe Biden’s running mate, was elected as the nation’s first female vice president.
“It’s just so exciting,” Fuller, who had a “Play Like A Girl” sticker on the back of her helmet, said afterward. “The fact that I can represent all the girls out there that have wanted to do this or thought about playing football or any sport really, and it encourages them to be able to step out and do something big like this, it’s awesome.”
It could have been even more historically awesome in a historically wretched year if the Vanderbilt offense wasn’t about as threatening as a 3-week-old puppy.