They’re Game for the Gridiron and Life as a Pro

The Orange County Breakers, an expansion team of the National Women’s Football Assn., have no stadium, no training facilities, no multimillion-dollar television contracts, and, before Saturday, they had no players.

“I would have never thought I’d play professional football,” said Kalena Johnson, 21, a fitness trainer who along with six other women showed up Saturday at an Irvine neighborhood park for the Breakers’ inaugural tryouts

All seven made it, but no surprise there. At least 35 players are needed to field a team. But the tryout wasn’t so much about athletic prowess as it was about a dream.

“They are playing because they have an opportunity to do something that only men were allowed to do for a long time,” said Sean Sunay, the team’s coach. “They are showing incredible heart by just showing up today.”

The aspiring players included a couple of police officers, a Moreno Valley mother of two, a food manufacturing company executive and a 50-year-old human resources manager who once played with the now-defunct Los Angeles Dandelions women’s football team.

They showed they’ve all got game, pushing themselves through a series of physical tests and football drills. Johnson ran the 40-yard dash in a respectable 4.83 seconds.

“We got our running back!” shouted Julius Vasquez IV, the team’s defensive coordinator and a Breakers scout who put the recruits through the three-hour grind.

“That’s the time of an NFL lineman right there,” said Sunay, who during the week is an assistant football coach at Orange High School. “She won’t have to worry about getting hit because she can run right by them.”

Johnson may have a chance to do that this fall when the Breakers are tentatively scheduled to play an exhibition game against the Antelope Valley Bombers, the only other NWFA team in California. No one yet knows where the game will be played.

The Breakers, who must still fill their roster, are holding another tryout at noon Saturday at the same location, Ranch Park. The Bombers conducted their tryouts in January.

“I can’t wait to start with some contact, some scrimmages,” said Cindy Mc- Gowan, who had been the Bombers’ wide receiver until she switched Saturday to the Breakers, not for a signing bonus but out of convenience.

McGowan, a buyer for a food manufacturer, said the two-hour commute from Anaheim Hills made it difficult to attend the twice-weekly practices in Antelope Valley.

“I just can’t wait to knock someone down,” said the lanky 29-year-old, who can throw a perfect spiral pass.

Like McGowan, hundreds of women across the country are eagerly tackling professional football in three major leagues.

The Houston-based Women’s Professional Football League, launched in 1999, has four California teams: the L.A. Amazons, the Long Beach Aftershock, and the Sunfire and So Cal Scorpions in San Diego.

The Independent Women’s Football League, based in Austin, Texas, also begun in 1999, has six teams in the state, including the San Diego Sea Catz and the California Quake in Long Beach

The 4-year-old NWFA is based in Nashville. The league has 40 teams in 25 states and claims to be the largest tackle football league for women.

Still, women’s football is not quite prime-time. The Bombers attracted only 23 players in two days of tryouts in January.

And none of the Bombers or Breakers players are expected to be paid any time soon.

Still, “It was coolest thing I’ve ever done,” said Kay Luke, 40, a Mission Viejo mother and a women’s football veteran of sorts.

Luke played for the California Quake until last year when her knees gave out, she said. Now retired, she came to support the budding Orange County team Saturday.

Luke, who has a tattoo of the Quake logo on her left arm, was wearing the team’s 2001 league championship ring.

“We didn’t have Nike contracts or shoes named after us,” said Luke, flanked by her 11-year-old daughter, Ali. “But it was so rewarding. It is something that I’ll tell people for the rest of my life.”