Play like a girl: Beastrom makes Dogie history

Sonja Karp
NLJ Sports Reporter
 
Her motivation wasn’t to blaze any trails, but when senior Emily Beastrom donned her helmet and shoulder pads and stepped onto the gridiron in Hot Springs for the first time in August, she did just that. 
Beastrom wanted to play football since her freshman year in high school, however her physical size was just too small to risk going toe-to-toe against the big upperclassmen classmen who suited up. 
“I asked Conz [Matt Conzelman] if he would let me play but he wouldn’t because he just wasn’t comfortable with putting me out there,” Beastrom began. “And it did make sense but I wasn’t ready to give up on the idea.”
Finally, in her senior year her persistence paid off and Coach Conzelman gave her the okay to join the team. The first day that Beastrom showed up to practice, she made history at Newcastle High School by becoming the first female to play for the Dogie football team.
“I was super excited that he said yes, and I intended to play in more roles than just a kicker,” Beastrom admitted. “But then I tried practicing with the guys for the first few days, and I decided that I just wanted to kick.”
Beastrom is a long-time soccer player, having begun to play futbol at the age of 4. On the soccer pitch, she plays defense and has experience putting the boot to the ball owing to the fact that she has been largely
responsible for goal kicks throughout the course of her high school career.
That experience gave her the confidence to take the huge risk of taking on a sport that is almost exclusively male. 
“I’ve seen so many guys kick, and I thought that looked like a lot of fun, so I wanted to try it,” Beastrom said with a smile. “I knew I had some things to learn, but I felt like I had a pretty good background to do okay.”
It took a minute for the guys on the team to accept Beastrom, however after she demonstrated that she was there to play and to be part of the team, the Dogies embraced the idea and were very supportive of her presence on
their squad.
“They did pick on me a little until I stood up for myself, and after that they were really nice to me and thought it was super cool to have a girl on the team,” Beastrom laughed. “They didn’t treat me the same as they did the other guys completely though. Like when they would give each other slaps on their backsides, they would stop when they came to me.”
There were other aspects of the team from which Beastrom was excluded, and not everyone she encountered was as accepting of her
playing a guy’s sport as her teammates were.
“It was fun, but I was left out of a lot of things like pre-game. Obviously, I’m not allowed in the locker room so I missed out on the camaraderie that went on in there,” she began. “I changed by myself and tried to get hyped by myself so that was kind of a bummer.”
“I made a lot of memories and a lot of great friendships, but I also got a lot of dirty looks from other teams and other girls,” she continued. “But I had so much fun doing it and I would totally do it again.”
Beastrom specialized in kicking the point after touchdown (PAT), onside kicks and pooch kicks for the Dogies. Throughout the season, she was 5-7 for PATs with the two that she missed being blocked rather than an error on her part. As far as onside kicks go, her team was able to recover one of them against the Wheatland Bulldogs.
“My favorite moment was when I scored my first point in the first game of the season in Hot Springs,” Beastrom grinned. “And when the team recovered my onside kick in Wheatland, that was pretty cool too.”
When it came to kickoffs, however, Beastrom was not a fan. One reason for her lack of excitement regarding that role was that she admittedly didn’t possess a “big boot,” so she felt a little pressure to get distance on the kick. The main reason she preferred to remain on the sideline during kickoffs was that, as the kicker, she would also take on the role of safety and in the event an opposing player got past the rest of the defense, it would be left to her to bring him down before he could get in the endzone.
“I really don’t like to tackle so I was always hopeful that I wouldn’t have to do that,” she chuckled. “Fortunately, the guys were able to stop them before they got to me every time I had to do it.”
As a kicker, Beastrom was protected most of the time from being hit, but she didn’t come out of the season unscathed. In a junior varsity contest she was actually hit, and knocked down twice, and the second hit resulted in a bone bruise that sidelined her for a week.
“The first time he hit me, I just went down, but the second time I was in the process of kicking and that one hurt,” she explained. “It was a JV game so there wasn’t any roughing the kicker called on either
hit, but there probably should have been.” 
Seeing a girl suited up on the sidelines certainly doesn’t happen very often, but parents and fans seemed to be receptive to the idea.
“At one of our home games a lady approached my mom and asked if I was her daughter,” Beastrom began. “She said she was hoping they’d put me in because she wanted to see me play. Quite a few people seemed to be pretty excited to see me get out there.”
Beastrom stated that she is proud that she was able to play the game she had longed to play, and hopes that her success will be an inspiration to girls in the future to try new things and take a chance.
“I know that there is an eighth-grade girl who actually played this year, so maybe she’ll continue in high school,” she nodded. “I don’t know that I’m a trailblazer necessarily, but I hope my example will give girls the courage to try if they want to.”