Yahoo! Sports
As high school football has begun, we have now officially seen our second female highlighting the news. This week, Jenni Goethe, a 15-year old from Tecumseh High School in Oklahoma kicked the winning field goal in overtime at their football season opener.
Three days before the season began for Tecumseh, they didn’t even have a kicker. At this point, football coach Greg George approached Goethe and asked if she ever considered kicking a football due her soccer talents. Goethe is a star athlete, as she plays soccer and varsity basketball, so she was up for the challenge.
That night, she met with some friends on the football team at the field and began nailing every kick. Goethe tried out in front of the coaching staff the next morning. She was making kicks from 35-40 yards; of course the coaches were impressed.
She was immediately invited to the team, as she got her first try in gear at practice the next day. Apparently pressure didn’t faze her and she was sinking them in consistently.
Then came game time against Noble, a rival high school. In the third quarter, when Goethe came into the game to kick an extra-point, something went wrong with the formation, leaving her wide open for a defender to attack.
Her kick was blocked as the Noble defenders took her down. Goethe said it “made her mad but it didn’t hurt.” The team, seeing her toughness knew that she could drill the overtime kick, clearly she wasn’t going to say no.
Sure enough in overtime, at the 22-yard line, she kicked it through the field goal right on target, leading her team to a 16-13 win. She was carried off the field plus given the game ball by her coach. She’s now being seen as the game-winning celebrity in her town.
Only week 2 of high school football, yet we’ve already witnessed two females make their mark in high school football. It’s hard to tell what we will see next as females are attempting to prove their strength on the football field.
