Play Like A Girl

I don't need permission

To change this tradition

When they tell me

"You can't play"

I just turn my back and say

Now all over this big wide world

I play like a girl. 

-Janis Ian

Full disclosure demands that I acknowledge having never heard Sarah Fuller's name until this time last week, when the Vanderbilt University senior, the goalkeeper on the Commodores' SEC Championship-Winning Women's Soccer Team, was pressed into service as the kicker on the Commodores' woebegone football team, for which she made her debut on Saturday, November 28, 2020 against the University of Missouri. 

Just so no one accuses me of unfairly characterizing Vandy's football team as "woebegone", less than twenty-four hours after Mizzou shut them out 41-0, Vanderbilt fired its head coach, Derek Mason.  Coach Mason was in his seventh season as Vandy's head coach, during which time he had complied a 27-55 record, including 0-8 this season. Vanderbilt is one of America's truly great universities. It simply perpetually punches above its weight class playing football in the SEC.  

This weekend, although Derek Mason now has Vanderbilt Football firmly in his rear-view mirror, Sarah Fuller finds herself atop (and alone on) the depth chart for the Commodores' season finale Saturday afternoon in Athens, Georgia against the 10th-ranked Georgia Bulldogs.  Irrespective of whether Vandy's offense offers her an opportunity to do anything more than kick the one time she was able to kick last weekend, her story is worth knowing. Not simply for what she has done in these past seven to ten days but for what she had done as a student-athlete at Vanderbilt in the four years she has been a Commodore.  

Sarah Fuller v. Missouri - November 28, 2020

Photo Credit: (c) UPI 

I cannot do her story justice but, fortunately, ESPN has a writer who did.  I commend to your attention this piece Alex Scarborough wrote for its website.   When you read it, you shall learn as did I that this young woman's "overnight success" has been years in the making. It is as inextricably linked to her hard work, her mental toughness, and her perseverance as it is to her natural talent, which is considerable.  

-AK