The principal at a taxpayer-funded Florida high school has canceled the school’s annual powder-puff football game — a 50-year tradition in which the senior girls take on the junior girls in a rollicking game of full-contact, tackle football.
The school where the half-century-long tradition is ending is Jupiter High School in Jupiter, Fla., a beachfront Palm Beach suburb, reports the Associated Press.
The principal who decided to end the girls’ tackle football game is Dan Frank.
“Student safety is my first priority,” Frank wrote in an April 14 message obtained by area NBC affiliate WPTV. “After much deliberation and consideration, I feel it is necessary to change the annual powder puff football game from a tackle football game to a flag football game.” There is “the potential for a high risk of injury,” Frank said. Also, he believes the girls don’t practice enough and the pads and helmets may not fit them properly.
The local community has responded with outrage. Supporters of the annual event say it’s America’s only remaining powder-puff football game in which girls put on helmets, pads and jerseys to tackle each other on the gridiron.
Boys participate in the festivities by dressing as cheerleaders at the game — wigs, skirts, the whole bit — and in spirited pre-game pep rallies.
The game, which raised $7,000 last year in ticket sales, also brings a loud, boisterous crowd that is bigger than the crowds at Jupiter High boys’ football games.
The annual powder puff football game “has become a part of the fabric and character of the town,” a Change.org petition signed by nearly 3,000 people explains. “Many mothers — and some grandmothers — can recall when they played in the historic game, as they watch their own daughters take part in a special tradition that is truly like no other, as it captivates the rest of the town, year after year.”
“It is almost like a Friday night in Texas,” parent Marcy Murphy told the Associated Press. “Everyone comes out to watch the game. That is why you see the uproar. That’s what this game means to this town,”
Murphy’s son, a running back in the fall, was one of the coaches for the powder puff girls last year.
Practice lasts two weeks. The girls borrow helmets and pads from the boys’ football team and from a local youth tackle football league.
Frank, the Jupiter High principal, noted that a girl broke her leg in the powder puff game a couple years back. Also, each year players get bruises and sprains — just like in boys’ football. (The Jupiter High boys’ team went winless this season.)
Principal Frank said he may allow the game to return next year if several conditions are met. Among the conditions are the purchase of specially designed equipment and the additional practice time — two full months instead of two weeks.
Vincent Sparber, a local doctor, said he worried about the game because if girls “don’t know how to tackle and they fall the wrong way or hit the wrong way, a concussion is always there as a viable outcome.”
“When the boys practice football, they have months of preparation before,” Sparber told WPTV.
Most boys’ high school football teams begin practicing in early August and have their first games around the beginning of September at the latest. Thus, boys practice for maybe a month — though they do typically practice five days each week.
Perhaps most important to Frank and the school district, the principal also wants to make the game is specially insured.
In past years, girls who play in the game have been required to sign waivers which acknowledge the possibility of injury.
“It’s bumps and bruises, but if you can’t handle it, you don’t play,” senior Georgia Taylor told the NBC affiliate. “We want to do it because we’re girls and we don’t get the opportunities that the boys do.”
A group of Jupiter High senior girls said Frank suggested the girls give up tackle football and play some kickball game in which base runners bob for apples at second base. The seniors said they felt belittled by this bizarre suggestion.
“We are not in elementary school,” senior Megan Mendoza told the Associated Press.
The girls also observed that girls in Florida are allowed to play high school football with boys — and participate in many other potentially injury-causing activities including soccer, basketball, cheerleading and the like.
“The car ride to the game is more dangerous” than the football game, parent Lori Walsh told the AP.
Powder puff football games for girls are fairly common all over America. However, outside of Jupiter the games are flag football with little physical contact.
On Wednesday, Ryan Novak, the creator of the petition against the principal’s game ban, took to Change.org to announce an update.
“At tonight’s Jupiter town council meeting, there was a unanimous vote for this year’s game to happen,” Novak wrote. The vote apparently involved a decision for the town to secure use of the stadium where the game traditionally takes place.
School district officials must still agree to the request. As of Thursday morning, they have not yet agreed.
“It would not be the same if not under the lights of Jupiter High,” Novak wrote. “Stay tuned for game details!”
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