Meet Sarah Fuller: The First Female Athlete to Dress and Travel with an SEC Football Team

Mark Humphrey. Shutterstock Images.

So here's the thing about Vanderbilt football: they're ~not good~. They're currently 0-7 in the SEC, but there's something happening this week at Vanderbilt that has the potential to be record breaking, and in a positive way. With opt outs and contact tracing with COVID, their special teams are essentially depleted. Head coach Derek Mason reached out to Vandy's women's soccer senior goalkeeper Sarah Fuller to try out for the team and suit up to be their kicker this weekend versus Mizzou. That is fucking awesome. She's not a novelty act either. Fuller is an excellent athlete: she and the women's soccer team just won the SEC championship a few days earlier. 

This is not about getting some positive attention in garbage time of another losing season. Mason said this about Sarah: "She's got a strong leg. We'll see what that yields…Sarah's an option. She seems to be a pretty good option, so we'll figure out what that looks like on Saturday."

So far the team has been perfect on extra points, but only 3 for 7 on FGs so it's not unlikely that she'll see action on Saturday. PR wise, there can't be this much hype around it for us to not see her. I will march down to Nashville myself and drop kick Mason for not putting his money where his mouth is and giving Sarah the chance to be the first woman to appear in a Power Five football game. He already gets all the credit for giving her a chance to be on the sideline. I'm over men getting credit for opening the door for women in sports, without actually giving them the chance to show their worth. We don't need another token there for optics, let women show what they can do. 

She will be the first woman ever to dress for an SEC football game and the first woman since 1999 to dress for P5 team. Bad. Fucking. Ass.

Also, Sarah is not just riding her laurels and being all "look at me for breaking ceilings." All season, football teams have been using patches or replacing names on jerseys for social justice purposes. Sarah will be wearing "Play Like a Girl" on her helmet. Sports and STEM promotion for women? Yes, yes, and more yes.

As someone who has benefited greatly from women's college athletics, seeing a moment like this means a lot, and is an impressive step forward. But before you come for me insinuating that I think women should be abundantly playing College Football; I'm not saying that. You couldn't pay me enough money to allow a 300lb 6'5" lineman to tackle me. There aren't many women out there that are built to play tackle football. No one would watch it either. It is more about putting the most capable person on the field for this job, regardless of gender. If she is the best kicker at Vanderbilt University why shouldn't she be out there?