Seeing women and young girls donning full football uniforms and taking to the gridiron has always fascinated me. My interest in the subject goes back to when I was a teenager in the late-1970s. I saw stories about those women's football championship games between the Toledo Troopers and the Oklahoma City Dolls on NBC's NFL pre-game show in the late-1970s; I remember a story about a girl playing high school football that ran on CBS' Saturday series In the News. I read and saved whatever articles I could find about women and girls playing tackle football. (I.e. Long Island's Tara King in 1977, Elizabeth Balsley in 1985, etc.) In October 1981, when I was a senior at Long Island's St. John the Baptist High School, I saw a girl come to the Halloween dance dressed in a full football uniform.
Then came the 1990s. After a failed career as a student teacher I suddenly found myself with time on my hands. So I decided to start doing research on women and girls who have played football with an eye toward writing and selling a motion picture screenplay. In my research, I was able to uncover a lot of hard-to-find information about the old National Women's Football League and related organizations. I was even able to get near-complete team histories of a couple teams based on correspondence with out-of-town newspapers. I obviously couldn't put it all in the screenplay. When the 25th anniversary of the 1974 founding of the NWFL came and went in 1999, I decided I must put up a website outlining the under-publicized history of women's tackle football. The result is Queens of the Gridiron: the Women and Girls of Tackle Football.
And while I must admit that some girls and young women do look rather sexy in full football uniforms and pads, sexual titillation IS NOT the purpose of this site. I want to convey information about and tell the stories of the young women and girls who have dared to go out and play tackle football. Queens of the Gridiron: the Women and Girls of Tackle Football and its companion site Princesses of the Gridiron: Girls in Tackle Football celebrate the achievements of the relatively small but growing number of women playing the sport of football.
I am trying to fill up my website with photographs of girls and women playing football. I want pictures of girls who used to play or currently play football in little league, Pop Warner, middle school, junior high school, and high school. These photos must show the girls in uniform, be it a practice uniform or a game uniform. I will accept practice photos, game action photos, and more formalized poses.
If you are a woman age 18 or older who used to play or is currently playing tackle football in school or in a local league (Police Athletic League, Pop Warner, etc.) and you have in-uniform pictures of yourself to offer, please e-mail the picture(s) as a .JPEG (.JPG) file to either david_j_6@hotmail.com or drjackso@suffolk.lib.ny.us. If you don't have your own scanner but would still like to send pictures for use on the site, please write to me at the mailing address I will give below. If you are under age 18, you MUST get your parents' permission before sending me pictures of yourself for posting on the website. If you can get your parents to write or e-mail me themselves with written consent for use of the pictures that would be even better.
My mailing address is as follows:
Mr. David R. Jackson
400 New Highway
Copiague, NY 11726-1028
I have a list of girls who have played football I most want pictures of. To see the list click here.
As always, I am looking for any and all available photos of women's tackle football from the 1970s and 1980s. Please e-mail me at either david_j_6@hotmail.com or drjackso@suffolk.lib.ny.us or write me at the address given above.
Thank you very much for your help.
This was last updated on January 13, 2001.
