'This is real football'

Women's full-contact team goes to championship

William Johnson, Daily World

Maureen Little of Acadiana Zydeco Football
(Photo credit: Freddie Herpin, Daily World)

The Acadiana Zydeco, a full-contact women’s football team based out of Opelousas, is making history and heading for St. Louis for its first championship game.

“We won four games and lost four games, but we won the right four games,” said Maureen Little, a defensive back for the team.

The big game is Saturday against the St. Louis Slam, and the team was getting in a final practice this week before leaving on Friday.

The game is the first of a series of championship games. If it wins there, the team moves on first to Kansas City, Mo., then Dallas and finally to San Diego for the national championship.

Little said the championship slot marks the high point of what she called a Cinderella season for the team.

“We had injuries of all kinds, and some of our players had to drop out. It has been a rough road to travel,” Little said. “We have overcome all kinds of adversities.”

Little lost her son this year to a severe asthma attack, and another player lost her father. The team’s coach had to quit and was replaced by Desmond Woods when the season was already well underway.

Woods said pulling the team together was a challenge; 50 percent of the players are rookies this year.

Still, he said the team is in shape for the big game.

“They have a lot of heart and lot of desire,” said Woods, who played three years with the Hurricanes, a Lafayette-based semi-pro team.

The Slam is considered one of the stronger teams in the 86-team, full-contact Women’s Football Alliance, but Woods said that doesn’t trouble him.

“We like being the underdog,” Woods said. “We have a lot of eager women who want to play football and want to win.”

The team’s creator and center, Dr. Mia Ben, a pediatrician in Opelousas, agreed the game will be tough.

“I’ve watched the Slam play. They are former national champions,” Ben said. “I know they are good team. I’m looking forward to taking the field against them.”

Despite the strength of the competition, Woods said he believes his team has a chance.

“We have a good ground game,” he said. “They are going to have to find a way to stop us from running the ball.”

Although the Acadiana Zydeco record is only 4-4 this year, Ben said it has a lot of talent.

“We have four girls who are All-American,” she said. “One is up for rookie of the year and one player is up for defensive player of the year.”

Rachael Housley, a defensive tackle, is up for rookie of the year. She said her dad taught her to play football when she was a little girl.

“My nickname as a girl was ‘Little Diesel,’” she said, earning the name because she could hit as hard as a freight train.

She said her position is relatively easy to play.

“I just have to move faster than the other person and make sure they don’t get to my quarterback,” Housley said.

The women all play simply for the love of the game, and Little, whose day job is district executive for the Coushatta District of the Boy Scouts of America, is typical.

“We have a lot of students, a couple of police officers and a woman who works at Savoie’s Sausages. We have a grandmother as well,” Ben said.

The youngest player is 19, and four of its players are over 40.

“We call ourselves the 40-plus club,” Ben said with laugh.

“It took us four years to build this team, and we have gone through a lot of adversity to get here,” Ben said.

She said just getting the team started was a challenge.

“It was tough recruiting at first. A lot of people were expecting something different,” Ben said.

When it comes to women’s football, she said most players as well as most fans only know about lingerie football, which involves women recruited primarily for their looks playing football in their underwear.

“This is real football,” said Ben, who said the women play in full gear and hit as hard as the men.

“Once they get to see a game, they realize this is good, quality football,” Ben said.

Monica Thigpen, who is the team’s most senior player and an all-around threat, said the opportunity for the post-season game took the team by surprise.

“We had already packed up all our equipment for the season,” said Thigpen, who added it took a while to take it all in. It had already been a hard season. “My body said no, but my mind said yes.”

Thigpen started in the sport in Mobile, Ala., eight years ago, continued to play when she moved to Baton Rouge and now plays both offense and defense as well as special teams for the Opelousas team.

She is also the only player to ever make the playoffs before, though with a different team.

“The level of competition really changes. The players are expected to step up their game,” Thigpen said. “To be at this level is really exciting.”

She said the camaraderie is also impressive. “We are like a sisterhood,” Thigpen said.

Little said that solidarity amazed her.

When news of her son’s death spread, every team in the nation included her son Adrian in the prayer that is said before every game. She said Adrian, who was only 8, served as the team’s unofficial mascot. He’d do the robot dance every time anyone scored.

She said all the teams also did the robot in his honor at their game and many of the women in the local district, which stretches from Baton Rouge to New Orleans, showed up for his funeral in full gear.

“We had 1,200 people at the funeral. I didn’t realize what he meant to all these people,” Little said.

If there was a positive to his death, she said it was that this outpouring of support has raised awareness of the importance of organ donations. Her son was able to give sight to two people.

“A 50-year-old woman has his kidney, a little girl less than 1 has his liver and a little boy has his heart,” Little said. “Maybe that was his purpose. He was always so happy when he danced for us.”