These Toronto high school girls wanted to play tackle football just like the boys. So they started a team of their own

This year, things changed. Western Technical-Commercial School is fielding the first girls’ tackle football team in Toronto high school history. They’re part of a vanguard movement in Ontario to open doors for girls and women to gear up and play full-tackle football, just like boys and men do.

“I was really excited and happy to join the girls’ football team,” said Strong, the team’s running back.

They stand alone in the city so Western Tech’s entire season takes place Thursday in a series of mini scrimmages against four teams from Ottawa and Sudbury high schools. It’s part of a Football Ontario female jamboree at York University where the Ontario Women’s Football League — the first dedicated women’s tackle football league in the province — launches Saturday.

Teacher Russ Hoff has been a football coach for decades and when a female student was so keen to play football she joined his boys’ team last year, he decided it was time girls got a team of their own.

“The world is all about — especially in education — diversity, equity and inclusion and I felt this was a good way to address those things in sport,” Hoff said.

For football proponents, offering female students the opportunity to play is more than a check mark for gender equality; it’s also providing a sport that caters to a range of body types and skills.

“It’s very inclusive,” said Aaron Geisler, executive director of Football Ontario. “There are very few sports where you can have a 200-pound athlete and a 130-pound athlete competing in the same realm. Offensive line and wide receivers are very different but they play the same sport.”

In a practice last week, 16-year-old centre Cairo Gregory went through the drill of snapping the ball to the quarterback before moving to block with the rest of the offensive line. Prior to joining this team in April, Gregory had not played a sport since she was six years old.

“I’d draw pictures in the sand at softball and pick flowers at soccer — I wasn’t a sports kid,” she said. “They said all shapes and sizes can come, any experience level can come and join the team and we’ll find a place for you. I really liked that.”

The football team has attracted about 35 students in Grades 9 through 12 at the school, which is about a 10-minute walk from Runnymede subway station. Some, like Strong, play numerous other school sports and were drawn to try one they’ve never had the opportunity to do before. Others, like Gregory, are playing their very first school sport, Hoff said.

“A whole bunch of girls are here that don’t play anything for whatever reason, whether that’s body type or fitness level. A lot of sports are really just running and I know firsthand that’s not all football is,” said Hoff, who played offensive line long before he was a teacher and coach.

The school received a Canadian Tire Jumpstart grant for the team that made it possible to buy jerseys and coaching aids like tackling wheels and blocking dummies. There was no cost to join the team. They wear pads and helmets the school already owned for its boys’ team.

“A helmet is kind of heavy, like heavier than you would expect,” Strong said. “You’re used to seeing guys with these big shoulder pads making their shoulders look wider. When we got into it, we got to have the wide shoulders and the big heads, it felt empowering. It felt really good.”

Like the equipment, tackling was also a learning — and ultimately powerful — experience.

“At first, it’s a scary experience to have a girl running at you full force,” Strong said. “The first time I was going to get tackled, I was like, ‘This is going to hurt, this is going to hurt.’ And it really didn’t because they’ve taught us how to tackle in a safe way so we’re not hurting each other. And it was kind of cool to be like, ‘Hey, I can tackle someone.’ ”

After a month of practices, she doesn’t think about that anymore: “If someone tackles you, someone tackles you, just hang on to the ball.”

Isabella Mastoropoulos is one of the few players who previously played football. She’s the student who joined Western Tech’s boys’ football team last year.

“I was the only girl. I thought most girls would want to do it but they’re too scared to actually join the boys’ team,” the 18-year-old defensive back said.

“There’s no other sport like football. It’s aggressive but in a safe way.”

Joining the boys’ team meant jumping into senior high school football without having had any development level opportunities. Mastoropoulos enjoyed it but practised more than she played and was keen for a chance to learn and play football on an all-girls team.

“My mom, she’s happy, too. She likes that I can channel my aggression,” she said, smiling.

Hoff doesn’t know what’s in the future for the program he started.

“Football is a very complex sport and it puts a lot on coaches in terms of liability … and all teachers right now are stretched very thin doing cocurricular and extracurricular activities,” Hoff said.

There are half a dozen schools in the Toronto District School Board that have strong football programs that he thinks could field teams for girls if they decide to, and they could become an official high school sport. Western Tech’s team currently operates as a club.

(A dozen TDSB schools already offer flag football for girls — and if the NFL has its way, that’s what could make it to the 2028 L.A. Olympics. But flag is more of a running game than tackle football, a bit like rugby 7s compared to rugby 15s.)

Football Ontario hopes Thursday’s event will create visibility and opportunities.

“Western Tech and Russ Hoff saw these high schools in mostly northern and eastern Ontario spark up, and that sparked them up. So hopefully this sparks three or four more in the GTA in the next year and then we’re in a better position,” Geisler said.

“If you have a high school in one region but you don’t have competing high schools, then you’re having to travel to other regions to play. It’s kind of a chicken-egg thing: You need programs to start up but unless they see a league structure or a capacity to actually have a schedule, they don’t want to create programming.”

Western Tech’s players know they are new to the game so they’re keeping expectations in check.

“I’m hoping we’ll be able to work as a team,” Strong said. “And I hope little girls come and see us and they see a bunch of girls being aggressive and tackling each other and that they know that that’s OK for them to want to do.”