Despite an advocacy of women’s sports that includes a very first gig as a hoops reporter, The Gridiron Geek is not fond of long, glowing USA Today articles about women who compete against men, at least not when very little competition is really taking place. Babe Zaharias and other trailblazers who beat men at “men’s” sports roll-over in their graves whenever a women’s hockey player is given one shift in a men’s game, followed by male announcers virtue-signaling for 10 minutes. Women are often used as “tokens” by men’s teams looking for attention, forcing superstars like Alex Morgan into the role of the dwarf who took 1 at-bat for Cleveland in the 1950s.
Women have played tackle football for a decade now, with a ferocity that betrays the stupid grins on male cheerleaders’ faces at Powder Puff games. Some girls even suit-up with men’s Varsity and NCAA teams – and don’t do very much on the field. What the pigskin community needs is a special young woman to come along and destroy the boys on Friday night, to make a real difference by turning a struggling “Men’s” team into an All-Gender winner.
The Geek has searched across the 7 seas for just such a football player. Not much luck. Then TGG took a casual stroll to Tiger Stadium on Friday night. And wow. Wow. WOW. WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!
Say hello to Midmeadow Lane’s new kicker Emily Holt, with whom the ’21 Black & Gold could very well be 3-0 if only she were to have played in all 3 games up to now. No, seriously.
Holt, the proud twin-kin of offensive-line mainstay Connor Holt, made 8 out of her 9 XP attempts to steady a Tiger PAT unit that blundered away a chance to take St. Genevieve to overtime in Week 1. Each extra-point kick was a beautiful end-over-end rocket that would have cleared the crossbar on a mid-range FG try. Ms. Holt is clearly the best PK to don a Festus Tigers uniform since Travis Spraul, who graduated 7 years ago.
Incredibly, scoring 8 points (and leading most of the backfield in scoring!) wasn’t Holt’s only contribution to a 62-14 win. Head coach A.J. Ofodile braved controversy by sending the distaff rookie out to kick off too.
The kick-coverage team didn’t fare as well as it had in the opening 2 weeks with another kicker. Instead, lo and behold, IT IMPROVED. Holt further entertained a shell-shocked Tiger Stadium crowd after each Black & Gold TD and conversion, executing close to 10 “sky” kicks and knuckle-balls that befuddled Windsor KRs on the 20-yard line. No WHS returner advanced beyond midfield, a far cry from the kickoff-coverage blues of August. Holt is reasonably fast, experienced in rough sports like soccer and basketball (both skill-sets apply on the football field), and stout for her listed HUDL weight of 135 lbs. That gives the wunderkind an edge over “ceremonial” women placekickers when it comes to covering a Class 4 kickoff.
Ofodile gets credit for a masterstroke that absolutely no one outside of the coaches’ office and the Holt household saw coming. The last time Tri-City fans saw a female PK on their TVs was probably when Vanderbilt’s Sarah Fuller appeared with the Commodores late last season. But the closed-minded Vanderbilt coaches wouldn’t allow Fuller more than 1 short kickoff attempt in the game, passing-up FG opportunities and operating as if there was no kicker on the team at all. On Friday night, Festus gave Holt quite a different task – go out and lead a special-teams group that had cost the Tigers dearly in its debut. Ofodile not only rejected any idea of suiting-up Ms. Holt as a feel-good stunt, but asked his new secret weapon to singlehandedly save the Varsity Tigers from what had been FHS’s worst weakness in 2021.
LADIES and gentlemen, she did it. She. Did. It.
Wow.
The history is still being written, and not just because Ms. Emily Holt is FHS’s new star special-teamer until further notice. Rivals expecting a “woke” political statement and 1 lonely kickoff are about to be “woken” in the worst way, as Festus football has a legitimate field-goal kicking weapon for the first time in almost a decade. The prospect of Holt adding 5, 6, 7, or 10+ points to an already-healthy team scoring average is a scary thought for opposing QBs, who already have hands-full trying to out-fox Cole Rickermann.
Here’s where we’re supposed to credit Emily for “overcoming” the disadvantages of being a young woman who wants to play a men’s sport. But even that wouldn’t say enough about the Tiger padawan’s Jedi-like accomplishment. Holt’s status as a woman didn’t serve as an obstacle to her turning the boys’ special teams effort around. It helped her.
Women have sneaky edges in some sports scenarios, a point lost in the controversy over trans-kids and testosterone. Any man on this planet who tried Simone Biles’ balance-beam routine from the Olympics would be wheeled away on a stretcher. (There’s an old comedy act in which a male gymnast – wearing a wig and a push-up bra – attempts a women’s Uneven Bars routine and fails spectacularly.) Another advantage women have is that they’ve grown up learning how to focus through all distractions and tune-out every last bit of external noise. That’s the only way a kid like Holt can show up on Day 1 and lift her entire team having never played the sport before.
How did KRD look in his Varsity debut at Festus? He jogged up and down the sideline a few times. How did Cole Rickermann look when he took his first snaps vs DeSoto in 2019? Let’s don’t talk about that, out of respect for #12 and because such tales don’t belong under a happy headline.
This isn’t a place for Friday Night Scores & Analysis either, but Festus scored about 20 more TDs in the 1st half than in last year’s snoozer at WHS. You have to think the boys were inspired to get Emily on the field as often as possible while the seniors were playing. In addition, Holt’s presence on the XP team helped transform a snapper-holder combo that stunk like a skunk vs St. Genevieve.
Regressive local sports figures (like Bluto Zanax) will whisper that Holt can’t take credit for her supporting cast’s crispness on Friday, since the snapper, holder, and blockers were on their own. That’s a laugh, since women’s sports haters always argue in HERE ARE THE BARE FACTS terms.
The BARE FACTS are that if Emily Holt had been Charlie Brown’d out of her XP attempts by a lousy snap-hold combo on Friday, 2 unlucky players from Festus High School would have gone down in the history books for all the wrong reasons. Black & Gold wasn’t about to let that happen, taking the time to sharpen Holt’s field-goal team into a nearly perfect unit.
Holt’s football commitment – as in, her actual “football” commitment – won’t get in the way of fall pigskin as the Girls Soccer pitch isn’t active until spring. Cole Rickermann is happy about that news – the senior QB is now under less pressure to convert on 3rd down and goal, knowing that the FG unit can score points on any turnover-free trip to the Red Zone. When you’re playing a team that can’t kick a field goal, a go-ahead FG is as good as a touchdown.
Not a bad takeaway from a “ho hum” Mississippi Conference game played next to West City Park. Travel to the Pyramids if you must, padawans – every so often, something legendary happens right down the street.
Original Byline Date: 9/12/21