Remember Sam Gordon? She’s the young girl from Utah whose football highlight reel went viral when she was nine years old and juking boys left and right as she ran for touchdowns.
Now 14 years old, Sam just started her freshman year of high school. She plays soccer, but because her school doesn’t have a girls’ football team, she, along with her father, have begun work to create one, for a second time.
So Brent Gordon, Sam’s father and a lawyer, came up with a solution: file a Title IX lawsuit to force the local school districts to offer girls’ football in her county of Salt Lake, Utah, submitting the papers on the 45th anniversary of Title IX….
The suit follows up on the success of the local recreational league the Gordons helped kick-start just two years ago. Immediately the league started with 50 girls playing competitively, and it grew to nearly 200 in a short time. The interest generated by the league locally, Brent says, will serve as the backbone for the lawsuit. (Bleacher Report)
Great Big Story recently put together a great video feature on Sam and what the sport means to her and so many other girls who have picked up a helmet.
“I wanted to start the girls’ tackle football league after talking at a school assembly, and asking the question, ‘How many girls here would want to play tackle football?’ Almost every hand in the room went up,” Sam said. “So I got the idea like, okay, if there’s this many at one school, imagine how many there are in Utah or just in the nation.”
She may have scored 35 touchdowns and rushed for 1,900 yards in a season, but what she’s doing to give girls an opportunity to play is bigger than any touchdown she’ll ever score.
Go get em, Sam.
