She’s Making Waves After Starting As Quarterback And Leading Her High School Football Team To Victory During Homecoming
Did you know that during the 2018 to 2019 school year– the latest reporting year on record– just over one million high school boys participated in traditional eleven-player football?
Well, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS), only about two thousand and four hundred girls played for their high school team that year.
This means that female players represent less than a hundredth of a percent of high school football players in the United States. And typically, the girls who do play are put into low or no-contact positions– such as placekickers.
But one high school student from Wisconsin is changing this reality– one pass at a time.
Ava Matz, a senior at Pewaukee High School, started as her varsity team’s quarterback during the homecoming and senior night game last week.
She described how after initially joining the football team back in freshman year, other students were shocked, and it was challenging to find her footing.
“At first, it was a little hard to kind of be like, ‘Where is my place? Do I get to speak up? Where is my role?'” Ava said in an interview with CBS.
But now that Ava is a senior, she believes her teammates have fully accepted her. Moreover, they cannot see her anywhere else besides killing it on the field.
TikTok; pictured above is Ava
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This has allowed Ava to switch her focus to helping the next generation of aspiring female football players figure out their own place in the game.
“Now I realize my role is to speak up and to be included and to help others find their place, too,” Ava explained.
And Ava’s coach, Justin Friske, believes that the high school senior has really come into her own and grown into a vocal team leader. He also shared how Ava’s participation is slowly changing the typical perception of girls on boys’ football teams.
“Ava’s just Ava, and I think a lot of people are just like, ‘Well, that’s what Ava does.’ And it’s kind of a regular thing,” Friske began.
“So, to be honest, that might be the most powerful thing of all. It’s not a novelty, and it’s not some kind of fad that she is on the football team.”
With Ava leading the charge last week, the Pewaukee football team won its homecoming game with a landslide sixty-six to six lead. She contributed multiple scoring drives, and her mother, Reva Matz, was overjoyed.
“I cannot be prouder. I love her to death. She will remember this forever, and I will remember this forever,” Reva said.
To keep up with Ava this football season, you can visit her TikTok account linked here. You might even catch her doing a pregame dance trend in the locker room.
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