Tamara Taylor has played softball, volleyball and basketball, but tackle football hits different — literally.

“I just like to hit people and have fun,” said Taylor, 31, defensive lineman for Denver’s Mile High Blaze women’s tackle football team. “When I moved to Denver, that’s when I found out about football in general … I wouldn’t change it for the world.” 

Taylor and players like her are punting football’s traditional gender norms — tackle is for boys and men, flag is for girls and women — with a growing fan base across the country. And the sports world is taking notice: The Women’s Football Alliance (WFA) — home to the Blaze — became the first women’s tackle football league to secure a multiyear network deal with ESPN2, and the league’s national championship has been broadcast on the sports network for the last three years. 

This year’s national championship brought in 969,000 total live viewers, making it the most-watched game on ESPN2 that day. The WFA’s St. Louis Slam took home the win against the DC Divas with a final score of 26-14.

The WFA has also announced expansion into Canada this year. The women’s tackle league has partnered with Cosmos Sports & Entertainment, a sports marketing firm based in Ontario, to identify cities in Canada that could host a team. 

Lisa King, a former semi-professional soccer player, founded the WFA in 2009. The alliance is the oldest and largest women’s tackle football league in the world. With 60 teams across three divisions, the league has 12 professional teams. 

King was interested in playing football throughout her childhood, but her parents denied her opportunity. After graduating from college, she jumped at the chance to play for a women’s tackle football team in Los Angeles. In founding the league, she wanted to use a similar structure as the soccer teams she had excelled in and bring it to women’s tackle football. 

Ten years later, in 2019, Odessa Jenkins, a former player for the WFA, expanded opportunities by creating the Women’s National Football Conference (WNFC). Made up of 17 teams, the WNFC may be smaller in size, but has made an impact on the future of women in football by having a robust branding infrastructure in place to amplify the sport, including creative direction. Jenkins, who played and coached for the WFA’s Dallas Elite, aims to expand opportunities for women football players so that they get the level of recognition they deserve. 

For the WNFC, this year marks the first time they have broadcast their national championship game on ESPN2. The matchup between the Texas Elite Spartans and Washington Prodigy came with a new high in digital engagement. The broadcast gained 150,000 championship viewers and more than 150,000 followers on Instagram, a 61% increase since 2024. The league’s TikTok account also doubled since last year, with over 46,000 followers. 

And ideally, that recognition will come with pay for players — in the WNFC and the WFA. While neither league provides a salary for players, the WNFC does offer prize money to championship teams. With help from sponsorships by brands like Adidas, Dove and Riddell, the WNFC provided players on the championship team with $20,000. The WFA did not provide a monetary prize for the championship, but was able to cover some costs for players.  

“It’s truly a pay-to-play type of situation because we’re not paying these wonderful athletes,” said Rob Sandlin, head coach of the Mile High Blaze, who noted that the financial strain and dedication required can be the biggest challenges for players new to the sport. “We try to be as brutally honest as possible when it comes to what to expect. The one thing that most rookies don’t quite understand is the level of dedication that’s required.” 

Players must pay dues to remain part of the team, but payment doesn’t guarantee they’ll see time on the field.

“The physical aspects we can explain. The mental parts of the competition can be explained. The idea of how much work you have to put into it is probably the one thing that I get back from people that decide, ‘Yeah, I can’t do this,’ more than anything,” he said.

According to sports news site Marca, the average NFL salary in 2024 was about $3.2 million. While women don’t play for NFL teams, there has been growth in opportunities for women to be on staff. The NFL now has the most full-time women coaches of any professional men’s sports league, with 15 women holding coaching positions across departments. 

While girls have access to flag football, a low-contact variant of tackle football, the sport traditionally separates based on gender as young athletes get older. Youth flag football has co-ed opportunities for players ranging from 5 to 17 years old. Tackle football more commonly has restrictions on girls and women playing, both during adolescence and adulthood.  

Women’s flag football is seeing growth of its own, with the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics announcing that they will have women’s flag football teams competing for the first time. The NFL has also received bids for future investments in women’s professional flag football leagues this year.

Challenges aside, being in a high-contact sport as a woman has proven to be a unique and rewarding experience for these football players, whether they started playing as children with their siblings or discovered tackle as adults. 

For Yolanda “YoYo” Searcy, football was etched in her life at a young age. Breaking with tradition, her Florida high school offered her a spot on the all-boys football team.

“The head coach coached all my siblings and was like, ‘I know what you can do,’” she said. 

She declined and joined a school-sanctioned flag football team instead. Years later, she got her chance to play with other tackle-loving women as a linebacker with the Mile High Blaze. 

Rosa Climaco, who has been an offensive lineman for the WNFC’s Washington Prodigy for three years, feels she could have benefited from finding football earlier. As someone interested in incorporating fitness into her lifestyle, Climaco finds football to be the perfect choice.

“One night scrolling on Instagram at 3 a.m., I found [WFA player] Lois Cook’s Instagram and just started going down the rabbit hole. I’m like, ‘Whoa, there is a legitimate football league that exists for women,’ and really the only regret I have is that I found it when I was 31,” she said.

Some players find that they have to balance the societal expectation for women to curb aggression with the demand for them to play rough to win. 

“I personally think there’s caution tape around aggression even still in women’s football,” said Kourtney “KP” Purham, offensive lineman for the Washington Prodigy. “The idea for men obviously is to be aggressive at its most violent level. One of the things our coach says this year is ‘I support organized violence,’ but it’s like him selling that to us because women are taught not to be that way.” 

“So, you’re now trying to navigate through what violence looks like in a sport that was designed for men to be violent and still how to be a lady in a violent sport,” Purham said.

Tapping into aggression comes more naturally to some of these athletes than others. While some players found tackle football to be a place where they could release that side of their personalities, others have had to embrace their aggressive side for the first time. 

“A lot of the time for me, it was always, ‘You’re too loud, you’re too rough, you’re too this, you’re too that,’” said Washington Prodigy linebacker and captain Ramzeh Deen-sie.“I was still seeking a way to get out my aggression and just be who I am in my true, natural self.” 

Deen-sie describes her transition from playing offense to playing defense as a perfect fit for her personality. 

“It was just like, ‘OK, you want me to tackle whoever got the ball. You want me to put my shoulder pads through their chest and make sure they cannot come get you the next play,’” she said. “‘I can do that cause I’m already aggressive, I like to fight, I’m always on 10. I can do this.’” 

Tonique’a Jackson, offensive lineman for the Washington Prodigy, has a much different relationship with aggression. For her, focusing on protecting her teammates has allowed her to move with more force on the field.  

“I think trying to find that aggressive part of me, it took a really really long time. If it wasn’t being knocked over, if it wasn’t being tripped up, if it wasn’t being yelled at, it’s like you have to tap into the dog inside of you ’cause it’s either beat or be beaten, and that’s where my aggression comes from,” she said. 

Outside of pushing her to explore her self-expression, playing football has also allowed Jackson to carry on a family legacy. 

“In 2021, I lost my son to gun violence. He was very big in football, and [it was] something that was really, really important to him,” she said. “I wanted to find a way to not only stay connected to him but to also keep his dream alive because I felt like it was taken from him at such a short time in his life.” 

Players say they’re satisfied with the growing recognition for their sport — and their representation in it.

“Just to see now with the progression of us being kind of everywhere, involved in coaching at the high school level, too, we’re getting a lot more fans out,” said Mile High Blaze quarterback Kimberly Santistevan. “Whether they know us directly or they’ve heard of us and they want to see us and check us out … the stands are getting fuller and fuller every year.”