Golden Eagle Headed To National U18 Girls Football Championship

Jeff Green | Jun 15, 2022

Ever since she was very young, Kalisa Andrews has been athletic.

She started taking dance lessons when she was three and she has remained very active with Dance Fittazet in Sydenham ever since, and is working towards becoming a dance instructor in the coming years. She is now 16-years old, and is finishing up her grade 10 year at Sydenham High School.

When she was in grade 6, during recess at Harrowsmith Public school, friends of hers were playing football, and she caught a pass. Something about the way she caught the ball made her friend suggest that she come out to the Thousand Islands Minor Football League (TIMFL) to play.

“I did not know much about football at the time,” she said in a phone interview this week.

“My dad was a hockey and baseball fan, and if we watched any sports at home it was hockey. But I went out for the TIMFL and I loved the sport, and we became a football family,” she said, in an interview this week.

After playing with the boys in the TIMFL for a few years, she developed a feel for the game, and a lot of skills. She also found that the strength training for football helped her dancing, and the flexibility she learned from dance helped her become better at football.

When she started at Sydenham High School in 2020, there was no football, or any inter-school sports at all, because of the pandemic. But when football came back in 2021, she knew a lot of the boys who were trying out from the team from the TIMFL, and she wondered if she should try out.

“I asked one of the team’s coaches if I should try out, and he said I should, so I did and I made the team.”

Not only is Kalista a girl playing a sport that has been traditionally played by boys, she plays middle linebacker, one of the most physical positions in the game. That was not the only challenge that she faced last fall. Being the only girl playing a boys’ sport was also an adjustment.

“The boys were great. I know most of them from TIMFL and they are comfortable hitting me just like they hit each other. And the coaches were great as well. But at school I was a bit nervous about it.”

There is a tradition at SHS for the football team to wear their jerseys to school on the day of a game, and before the first game of the season, she was self-conscious about wearing the jersey all day. She wore it anyway, however.

“I was nervous because it was the only girl wearing a football jersey, and I thought girls would not understand what I was doing, but it was ok, and by the end of the season everyone got used to it.”

Playing for the Sydenham Golden Eagles Junior Team last fall was especially demanding because they were a particularly good team. They lost only one game enroute to the first Kingston Association of Secondary Schools Athletic Association (KASSAA) junior football championship for SHS in over 20 years.

Kalista also plays flag football in a league in Kingston, and one of the coaches in that league said there was a national Under 18 (U18) women’s football championship that Ontario competes in, and she might want to try out for the team.

That sent her to Ottawa for the first tryouts at Carleton University. She made the top 40, and then went back for the second tryout, and she is now one of two young women from Southeastern Ontario, along with a student from Holy Cross, who are on the Ontario U18, team that will be travelling to Regina, on June 30, to participate in the national championships, which runs until July 10.

The team has been assembled from across the province, but they have never even met, much less practiced together.

“We will meet three hours before our flight at the Toronto airport,” Kalista said, “and we have a couple of days to practice before our first game on July 3rd.

Although she does not know what position she will play or if she will start, she did try out for middle linebacker and expects that is the position that she will play. Not only is it a physically demanding position, the middle linebacker is also called the quarterback of the defense, because the defense revolves around that position and the middle linebacker often calls the defensive plays.

Even before making the team, the experience of the tryouts was rewarding for Kalista, because it brought her in contact, for the first time, with women football players.

“It was nice to talk about a sport that I enjoy with girls who love the sport the way I do. At the first tryouts at Carleton, players and coaches from the Carleton University women’s team were there, and it was great to meet them as well.”

As the tournament in Regina approaches, she is looking forward to the entire experience, from the football to the other events that are being planned as part of the tournament.

But she has not had time to linger too much on what is coming in July. Between finishing up her dance year, working on year end school assignments and studying for a history exam next, keeping up with training and rehab for an ankle injury, while working part-time at Sydenham Foodland, she has kept pretty busy.

For her family, it has been a busy time as well.

“My parents have been to every football game that I have ever played,” she said, “but it is a little more complicated this time.”

Flights to Regina are expensive, and Kalista’s mother Sarah doesn’t fly anyway, so after they drop Kalista off at the airport, they will be heading out, by car, and will make it to Regina in time for the first game.

“It will be a lot of driving, but we wouldn’t want to miss it,” Sarah said.

After the tournament, it is unclear what Kalista’s immediate future in football will look like. She is a bit reluctant to try out for the Senior Golden Eagles team because of the size of the players in senior high school football.

“If I do try out, it will probably be as a Safety instead of a Linebacker,” she said, a position where bulk is less of a requirement than middle linebacker.

She will certainly continue playing flag football, and after high school, the possibility of university women’s football is something she will very likely pursue.