Sugar and spice and everything nice, that's what little girls are made of.
Whoa. That doesn't sound right, does it?
That's the old version of little girls. Really old. Like, maybe, Little
Girls 1.0. We're beyond that now. Way beyond that. The recipe for today's
little girls has a lot more to it than a little sweet, a bit of spice and a
dollop of nice.
Kelly Kozlen is example No. 1 of how that recipe has evolved.
To be sure, there's plenty of the old recipe in Kozlen. One of the St. Louis
Public Schools' Teacher of the Year award winners last spring, she is smart
and fun, energetic and caring. There's more though. Where, for instance,
would a take-your-breath-away tackle fit into the old little-girl recipe?
How would you squeeze a full-speed-ahead feint that leaves a defensive end
holding nothing but air into the old three-part mix?
Kozlen, who grew up in the Imperial area, sees no problem fitting football
under the things-today's-little-girls-ought-to-try-when-they-grow-up
umbrella.
Kozlen says it's time to turn the obvious question – why would you play
football? – on its head. Now, she says, a better question is: Why wouldn't
you?
Why wouldn't you? No reason, no reason at all.
"I really love it," Kozlen says.
That is oh-so-evident in her play with the St. Louis Slam, the local entry
in a national women's full-contact football league. The 5-foot-7, 175-pound
Kozlen is a go-everywhere, do-everything player. That's particularly so on
defense where, as the Slam's middle linebacker, she plays with the sort of
energy and passion that inspires teammates and thrills fans.
"I'm the player people like to watch because I put the hits on," she says.
There is no argument about that around the National Women's Football
Association, a group built on the idea that sugar, spice and everything nice
is only the start of the story for some little girls.
The defensive coach for the Massachusetts Mutiny team summed up Kozlen's
game after scouting the Slam in the first round of the playoffs.
"He said the difference between me and the rest of the other girls is I play
with is my heart," the 28-year-old Kozlen said.
The NWFA will salute Kozlen and several other top athletes at its annual
awards program and championship game Aug. 4-5 in Pittsburgh, Pa. Kozlen will
be recognized for being the leading tackler in the 30-team league and for
setting the league record for tackles in a season. She also is a finalist
for the league's defensive player of the year honor.
This year's NWFA awards – the awards are called the Whammys – won't be the
first time the former DuBourg and Fox High athlete has been recognized by
the football league. She has been a member of the all-league defensive team
each of her first three seasons in the league and seems a lock for an
all-star berth again this year after leading the Slam to a 7-3 record, a
division title and the team's first playoff victory.
Kozlen and the Slam closed their season recently at Boston. A 42-14 loss to
the Mutiny in the second round of the post-season knocked them out of the
playoffs.
Kozlen's go-go schedule will swallow up the hole created by the end of the
football season. Besides teaching – she was part of the advanced science
camp the city schools held at Monroe Academy this summer – she has indoor
soccer, outdoor soccer and softball to fill up her week.
Kozlen never intended for football to turn out to be such a big part of her
life. She considered trying out in high school as a place kicker, but she
let the opportunity pass. Though she liked watching the action – "When I was
at Fox and when I was at DuBourg, I always went to the games," she says –
she admits she hadn't been bitten by the football bug.
While she was limited to being a football spectator in high school, she
always was on the go athletically. A three-sport athlete in high school, she
played soccer – she was a goalie – at Central Missouri State University.
While in college, she also played on flag football and rugby teams.
"I've always been pretty aggressive," she says. "I've always been very
physical."
Those traits came naturally to an athlete who describes herself as "a
third-generation linebacker."
It took a happy accident to put Kozlen in the Slam's lineup. Playing in a
flag football league in Forest Park, she heard that a new women's football
team was holding tryouts on another field in the park.
"I walked over there, and they were hitting each other without pads, and I
thought: That looks like fun."
Kozlen asked a few questions and got a few answers. It didn't take much more
than that to convince her that the full-contact game was worth a try.
Kozlen was a natural. She sailed through the first grueling practices and
quickly became the anchor of the team's defense that first season, 2002.
She says that during that first season, the game sometimes was a blur with
22 players moving at top speed in every imaginable direction. It was
something like being inside a pinball machine.
"I understood it, but I really didn't understand the logistics of it," she
says. "I didn't really, really start understanding it until the second year
I was playing. That's probably when everything started to make sense."
Certainly, Kozlen wasn't alone in being a bit overwhelmed by football's many
moving pieces in her first season of play. While the experience level
improves every year, the NWFA has a long, long list of players who rely on
athletic skill to overcome their lack of experience.
Kozlen always has been impressed by the natural skills of her Slam
teammates.
"We have a lot of really good athletes on the team," she says. "There are a
lot of girls with softball and basketball backgrounds."
While the NWFA attracts terrific athletes with college sports backgrounds,
the game's physical challenge turns out to be more than some are willing to
go through. Kozlen says, "We start out with about 50 or 60, and by the time
we put pads on there are only about 30 or 35 left," she says.
Kozlen, of course, is one of those 30 or 35. Not only one of them, she is
among the leaders.
So what are little girls made of?
The old ingredients still are part of the recipe, but women athletes like
Kozlen are proof that there's a lot more to the mix today than ever before.