Hail Mary
The Rise and Fall of the National Women's Football League
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- ¥2,600
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- ¥2,600
発行者による作品情報
The groundbreaking story of the National Women’s Football League, and the players whose spirit, rivalries, and tenacity changed the legacy of women’s sports forever.
In 1967, a Cleveland promoter recruited a group of women to compete as a traveling football troupe. It was conceived as a gimmick—in the vein of the Harlem Globetrotters—but the women who signed up really wanted to play. And they were determined to win.
Hail Mary chronicles the highs and lows of the National Women’s Football League, which took root in nineteen cities across the US over the course of two decades. Drawing on new interviews with former players from the Detroit Demons, the Toledo Troopers, the LA Dandelions, and more, Hail Mary brings us into the stadiums where they broke records, the small-town lesbian bars where they were recruited, and the backrooms where the league was formed, championed, and eventually shuttered. In an era of vibrant second wave feminism and Title IX activism, the athletes of the National Women’s Football League were boisterous pioneers on and off the field: you’ll be rooting for them from start to finish.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sportswriters De la Cretaz and D'Arcangelo present an entertaining history of the National Women's Football League, which, from 1974 to 1988, "broke the mold for what a football player was supposed to look like." Their story begins in 1967, when Cleveland entrepreneur Sid Friedman, inspired by the success of the Harlem Globetrotters, decided to establish a single women's team to compete against male squads. As De la Cretaz and D'Arcangelo exuberantly recount, that idea—initially created as a "gimmick"—morphed into a league of fierce competitors where all-female teams battled each other with the same intensity of their NFL counterparts. They illustrate how—in the face of rampant sexism (one reporter dismissed the teams as "social clubs with pads and cleats") and corny team names, such as the "Houston Herricanes"—the players garnered devoted fans. The NWFL never hit it big, in part because of a lack of respect from the media that, the authors argue, continues to this day regarding women's professional sports leagues. Without overstating the case, de la Cretaz and D'Arcangelo demonstrate how this overlooked chapter in American sports blazed a successful trail for today's women athletes. This underdog story is a delight.
