All women interested in joining Chattanooga Locomotion women’s full-contact football team can attend open tryouts beginning Jan. 15.
Quarterback Tiffany Newcomb, of Brainerd, said it’s not powder puff and you better believe it’s not flag football.
“We always have people drop out once we put on pads,” said Newcomb, named the team’s most valuable player for 2010 and now in her ninth Locomotion season.
“Our coaches teach football. They don’t teach women’s football,” said team owner Cheryl Jacobs. “There’s a huge difference when you see the other teams. Mad would be a good word. But we don’t play dirty. We play by the book.”
The team, entering its 11th season, is part of the Independent Women’s Football League. Each player finds sponsorships to cover uniforms, field time, referees and travel.
Newcomb is sponsored by Critter Control in East Brainerd where she’s employed as a wildlife control technician.
“She catches flying squirrels by hand,” said Critter Control owner Ed Lehr. “Not everybody can hire a quarterback. Her skills on the field translate right into what we do. She’s good with the customers. She’s good on her feet. She’s flexible. I say she sweeps invaders off the home field and the home front.”
Newcomb, who played competitive soccer in high school and softball through college, joined Locomotion because athletic pickings are slim after college, she said. The team has become a true sisterhood to her.
“It’s the most emotional and physical game that I have ever played,” she said. “I never knew I could get so upset. You have to learn how to control your emotions.”
As a veteran quarterback, she said, it’s her job to keep newcomers cool.
“You can always tell who the rookies are,” Newcomb said. “They fly off the handle quick,” finished lineman Denise Myers, who lives in the Bonny Oaks area.
Myers, also in her ninth year, said she plays to hit.
“That’s the best part,” she said. “Where else can you do something like that and not go to jail?”
Myers is sponsored by Long of Chattanooga car dealership, and her husband, Paul, gives all earnings from his summer lawn mowing jobs to the team. She grew up playing football with neighborhood boys.
“It was play and keep up or just sit around and watch. I wasn’t one to sit around and watch,” she said.
Last season, Jacobs said, the team got its first member who’d played little league football. All the others grew up watching or playing pickup games.
“You’re being told you can’t. It’s a man’s sport,” she said. “She came in with experience. That doesn’t happen very often.”
Jacobs said the league is family-oriented and her players strive to be role models for young girls.
“You can do anything you want,” she said. “It just shows them.”
Besides being the newest MVP, Newcomb was named an alternate on the 2009 All-Star team. Locomotion has gone to the playoffs every year but one in the eight she’s been there, winning the Southern Division championship in 2005.
Utility player Schandra “Sunshine” Loveless was selected for the active roster of the 2010 USA Football women’s national team – one of 45 selected from 1,800 women on 53 teams.
Locomotion games are April to June, with playoffs in June and July and a championship game in Texas. Red Bank High School’s football field is the Locomotion home field, and practices take place at D1 Sports Training near Hamilton Place Mall.