Meghan Cox takes soccer talent to gridiron
as
place kicker for Lee’s football team
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Toni L. Sandys/WASHINGTON POST - Lee
junior Meghan Cox gets dressed before a game against South County.
By Toni L. Sandys, Published:
October 16
Washington Post
When Meghan Cox, 16, was a freshman at Lee
High in Springfield, she briefly thought about trying out
for the football team. One of the area’s top soccer players (a
two-time All-Met honorable mention), Cox was looking for
a sport to fill her time in the fall. A few of her friends talked
her into playing play field hockey instead, and so for the past two
years that’s what she did.
As a member of a nationally-ranked club team, the VSA
Heat, Cox started going to the weight room this summer to
get in better condition for soccer. The room was filled with
football players.
“Some of the guys were just messing around,” Cox said. They
were repeatedly egging her on to try and kick a field goal. She had
never kicked a football before in her life. After a few kicks, she
drilled one from 40 yards out. After that, “they were the ones that
really talked me into it.”
Unsure if the team’s place kicker from last year was coming back,
first-year Coach Clarence Martin gave Cox the nod. “My mom and dad
were unsure about it at first,” Cox said. One of the school’s
athletic trainers, having worked with a female place kicker at the
school several years ago, reassured her parents that everything
would be fine. “I don’t hit or get hit at practice,” said Cox. “I’m
really not that worried about getting hurt.”
In fact, the coaches tell her to sit on the ground during a game if
need be. But when her field goal got blocked Friday during a loss to
district rival South
County, Cox jumped up to run after the ball and absorbed
her first hit. “It’s an instinct of mine,” she said. “In soccer, if
you lose the ball you gotta go back and get it.” Cox said she was
glad the South County player didn’t let up just because she was a
girl. “It was a clean hit. I saw him coming. I looked into his eyes
and I was like: ‘Uh, oh. Here we go.’ ”
As the team heads into the locker room, Cox grabs the keys from the
coach and veers off from the rest of the players. Without even
turning on the light in the girls’ locker room, she gets dressed by
herself. “It’s lonely because I have no one to talk to. It’s just me
and an empty room,” she said. “The guys, they have each other and
they also have a stereo system,” said Cox. She dresses quickly and
waits outside of the boys’ locker room, talking with coaches and
fans as her teammates finishing dressing.
That’s the only time Cox ever feels like she’s not a part of the
team.
She’s made an effort to prove to the players that she’s just as
dedicated to football as she is to soccer. She comes to every
three-hour practice knowing that if she wanted to, she could leave
early or take a day off. Twice a week she heads straight to soccer
practice after football practice. “Being here is important to the
guys,” Cox said. “ It shows them that both sports are very important
to me. I’m not just a kicker on the football team, I’m part of
them.”
Cox, who has one younger brother, now feels like she has fifty.
Quickly the team has become “like family and I’d do anything for
them,” said Cox. After Friday’s defeat, that means spending quite a
bit of time on the field as the Lancers prepare for their crosstown
rival, West Springfield.
“This week’s going to be a tough one,” said Cox, who like many of
the team had tears in her eyes at the end of the game. “The
practices are probably going to be a little bit longer and harder.”
“I’m ready for it,” she said. “I like a challenge.”
