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Hall-of-fame quarterback Karen Mulligan and her offense know their game plan: Read the defense, connect on passes—and find a sponsor to help fund the team’s travel costs.
The latter objective is just one of many ways the Jersey Shore Wave must sustain themselves as an up-and-coming women’s football team. Having already generated some early buzz, the Wave recently finished up their inaugural season in the full-contact Women’s National Football Conference. The WNFC has secured sponsors such as Adidas and Dick’s Sporting Goods and will broadcast its June 21 championship game, the IX Cup—named after the landmark anti-gender discrimination legislation—on ESPN2.
But owner Dawn Sherman still gets a lot of, “Oh, I didn’t know women played tackle football,” she says. “Well, they do. These women leave nothing out of the game. They’re hard-hitting, amazing athletes.”
Breaking barriers is woven into the team’s DNA in more ways than one. The Wave play their home games at Hinchliffe Stadium in Paterson, home to Negro League baseball games in the 1930s and ’40s. The stadium is a historic venue once again as the Wave’s players try to make a name for themselves in the league and as female athletes as a whole.
“It’s our first year, so of course we have something to prove,” says running back Ebony Goolsby. “Often in sports, women are overlooked. We put that on our backs with every practice.”
The team’s mission doesn’t come cheap, even with its players drawing no salaries. Players must adopt an all-hands-on-deck attitude when it comes to fundraising and promotion, meaning each is responsible for recruiting a sponsor and attending promotional events; some even help with social media. That’s in addition to their day jobs. Goolsby is an NJ Transit train conductor; head coach Fabian Alesandro teaches at Tenafly High School.
Alesandro has been coaching football for 25 years, first for a high school boys’ team and then for the now-defunct New York Sharks women’s team. The job is personal—his daughter played football on boys’ teams growing up. He recognizes that girls don’t usually get the same exposure to the game at a young age.
“It’s like they’re almost immigrants to the situation,” Alesandro says. “They’re not born into it like the boys are, and they have to learn everything on the fly,” he says. Luckily, the Wave have a talented roster, with Mulligan leading the charge. In her career, she’s thrown more than 25,000 yards and won gold with Team USA in the International Federation of American Football Women’s World Championship.
Despite this starpower, Alesandro believes a winning philosophy can’t be attained by a roster alone, and he emphasizes the importance of building a dedicated culture and atmosphere to surround the team. “Winning is the byproduct of [the culture],” he says. “It’s the difference between a finite and an infinite game. The game keeps going, so you need to establish that culture to keep the same attitude through the years.”
For now, the Wave closed out their first season with a respectable 2-4 record. But with a bright future ahead, the growing attention reminds players that their mission transcends simply scoring touchdowns. “It’s not just about us,” Goolsby says. “Girls and children in general are looking up to us because they want to do what we’re doing. It’s a big weight to carry, but it’s a beautiful weight to carry.”
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