Chelsea Hooper’s students and fellow teachers became worried when they saw the bruises. She would arrive at school with forearms marred by bluish-purple splotches—an obvious result of repeated blows. She heard expressions of concern the week she showed up wearing a cast on her arm. Her colleagues reminded her that she didn’t have to let this happen.
Chelsea would smile and reassure everyone that things were fine. The bruises were acceptable punishment for the chance to play professional football.
Hooper plays defensive end for the Nashville Dream—make that the undefeated Nashville Dream—a franchise in the fledgling National Women’s Football League.
Three evenings a week, from February through the end of May, Hooper would head home from Overbrook School, where she teaches computer classes, and change into her cleats, pads and helmet to begin a three-hour evening shift scrimmaging and running drills. It must rank as one of the most unusual second careers in Nashville. But it’s one that two dozen other women—whose day jobs range from factory workers to graphic designers—are making as members of Nashville’s newest pro sports team.
“Semipro” might be more accurate, since none of the Dream-teamers are making a profession of football yet. For that matter, none of the players or coaches even get paid, at least not while the 21 teams of the NWFL attempt to establish themselves solidly enough to cover more than their overhead costs.
The lack of compensation doesn’t seem to bother Hooper and her teammates, who, unlike pros in other sports, play almost entirely for the love of the game. The love is growing, too. With their 14-12 win over Atlanta last Saturday—the team’s only close game so far—the Dream moved to 6-0. Now, with just two regular-season contests left, they’re looking forward to a playoff berth and, possibly, a spot in the league’s championship game.
It was not exactly a spot that Hooper, who sports a schoolmarm’s oval glasses and weighs in at not much more than one-third the size of the average NFL lineman, envisioned for herself just a few months ago.
The competition and the game weren’t new. Growing up in Nashville, she played soccer since the early elementary grades and competed for Agnes Scott College in Georgia. And she played in intramural flag football leagues at Harding Academy and University School. (“I was the only girl,” she recalls.)
But the possibility of tackling pro football hadn’t crossed her mind—until, she says, she began hearing about the Dream through word of mouth and her husband Tim saw a notice of a tryout date.
“It was a Tuesday, and he said the tryouts were on Saturday,” Hooper remembers. “And I said, 'Oh, no!’ because I hadn’t been training.” Nevertheless, Chelsea was there, and she sufficiently impressed the coaches with her times in the 40-yard-dash and grades on agility drills that she earned a position.
She’s been a mainstay ever since. She started the season at cornerback. Then, after a broken and dislocated finger left her in a cast, she moved to defensive end, where, though she’s small even by the standards of women’s football, her speed has been a valuable asset. “We blitz a lot,” she says. “It’s a pretty aggressive defense. And I think I like defensive end better because you get to do something on every play.”
The broken finger was the most serious but far from the only injury Hooper has sustained, though none has sidelined her. She has pulled muscles, been poked in the eye, endured painful stingers in her neck and popped her shoulder out of joint. “Donna, our trainer, whacked it back into place,” Chelsea says matter-of-factly.
In its own way, football has made Hooper’s face recognizable, at least to the clinic staff at the Williamson County Medical Center, where she has sought treatment for some of the football-related bang-ups. “After I broke my finger they said, 'Oh, you again? Football again?’ ”she laughs. “They gave me some extra bandages because I was a frequent customer.”
Playing for the Dream also has made Hooper a minor celebrity at Overbrook School, where, in spite of the occasional questions from colleagues about her sanity, people have been extremely supportive. Fellow teachers—one of whom coached her high school flag football team—have turned out for her games, and she’s hopeful of spotting in the crowd some of the Dominican sisters who run the school.
“At one game,” she recalls, “all these children were screaming 'Mrs. Hooper!’ My teammates were asking, 'Who’s that?’ and I explained that it was a bunch of my fourth-graders.”
For Hooper’s students, having a teacher who’s also a pro football player is, to say the least, a novelty. Every Monday, she says, “they would ask, 'Did you win your game? Did you score?’ ” (She once could answer 'yes’ to the latter question; as the Dream’s backup placekicker, she connected on an extra-point try.) “When I had the cast on my arm, they all wanted to sign it. And they would notice my bruises or if I seemed tired because we had a rough practice the day before.”
In response to the interest from her pupils, Hooper created a bulletin board outside the computer lab where she teaches. It included upcoming schedules, scores from the previous week and other information about the team.
What Hooper noticed especially was the receptiveness among the children to the idea of women in a new, once unimaginable role. The interest in her football career, she estimates, has been equal between the girls and boys she teaches. And when she taught a unit on career choices, a “huge majority” of the third-grade girls said they were interested in becoming professional athletes.
It also has been an interesting reversal of traditional roles for Tim Hooper, who, his wife says, has not simply accepted women’s football but become an enthusiastic booster.
“He’s really into it,” Chelsea says. “He goes to all the away games. He helps me out a lot. When I’d come home all muddy after practice, he’d meet me at the laundry room with ice bags and a change of clothes. He calls himself a soccer mom.
“When we go out to eat, sometimes he’ll say to complete strangers, 'My wife is a professional football player.’ They won’t believe it, and then he’ll tell them about the Dream, and they may say, 'Oh, yeah, I heard something about that.’ ” Some of this, Chelsea reckons, her husband does to see how people react. “But I think a lot of it is he honestly wants to get the word out.”
Slowly, that word is spreading. Some of the crowds at La Vergne’s high school stadium, where the Dream play their home games, have approached 2,000. Afterward, Hooper says, there are plenty of young autograph seekers waiting.
There is still very much a barnstorming quality to the NWFL. The women pay a deposit on their own equipment (refundable at season’s end). Though the Dream charters a bus for road games, some franchises require their players to find their own transportation and lodging. The team’s quarterback, Christie Trost-Thomas, is also the owner. It’s a lot like the earliest days of men’s pro football—or, perhaps more apt, the women’s baseball circuit of the 1940s.
It’s being pioneers in a league of their own that Hooper finds especially appealing. “A lot of us on the team have talked about that,” she says. “We hope [the league] will open up a new venue, like the WNBA, where it could actually be a career opportunity for women.
“Sometimes when I stop and think about being a pro football player, it kind of blows my mind.”
