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About Cottage Grove sentinel. (Cottage Grove, Or.) 1909-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 18, 2017)
COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL OCTOBER 18, 2017 Continued from B1 because of her skill; a girl who has had dreams of playing foot- ball since she was little. “It really started when I was in second grade,” said Tayla who during a non-contact practice before a recent game is the only one wearing running shorts and a ponytail. “I’ve wanted to play ever since then just because my poppa and my dad and my un- cles kept telling me stories and stories of how awesome it was.” And so it was decided. Tayla was going to play football amongst the boys and that was that. “She really has that self-driven attitude. She always has, she always has. I mean, I’ve told her, you were born stubborn and you have not changed,” said Tayla’s mother Rebecca Swearengin. It was in this grit, this determination, this resolve, this stub- bornness that led Tayla to start playing. From a young age she was insistent that she was going to play despite her parents’ at- tempt to steer her away from a game of tackling and collisions (“It took me awhile to talk my mom into it,” recalled Tayla). They warned her the boys might be mean and that it might not be fun but nothing would sway her resolve. So in fi fth grade, when football is fi rst offered in Elkton, she was ready to go. “It was the fi rst practice she walked on the fi eld and there was one boy that said one rude thing to her and when practice was over he apologized to her and she has not had a single problem since. Not one. It’s just been Tayla is part of the team,” said Rebecca. Now as a part of the team, the game that she had been warned against, she has fallen for. “My very fi rst game that I played, I just loved it so much,” said Tayla. “But I was exhausted. I was dead. Like I just went home and laid on the fl oor. I knew that if I didn’t want to be like that I had to put in a lot of work.” And so Tayla did just that. In sixth grade she became a starter and soon after, started weights with Mike Hughes – her sixth grade and current coach at Elkton High School. “She has no fear. I mean, she doesn’t. She is extremely com- mitted to what she does. She has natural strength,” said Hughes. “For example she started lifting with me when she was in the seventh grade because I lift with the kids in the weight room. And now, on the leg press machine, there isn’t a boy on this team that can out press her. She’s pretty close to 600 pounds and she does it easy.” This constant work into making herself better has brought her to this: her freshman year at Elkton High School. No longer competing with the middle school boys, Tayla has now entered into the world of 1A football. Because of the school size in 1A, there is no freshman or JV team but just the varsity team. This means that 14-year-old Tayla can conceivably, and consistently, be facing off against 18-year-old boys on the line of scrimmage. “I didn’t worry all these other years because, like I said, she’s always taller and bigger than most of the boys,” said Rebecca. “Whereas this year, she is not. Most of the boys are bigger than her. This is the fi rst year I’ve worried about it. But with her, it’s not going to do anything to worry. She’s going to do it anyways so I guess I’ll just, if something happens, we’ll deal with it.” One adjustment that Tayla did not have to make was fi tting in with her new team. While there were some players that she had not played with, since Elkton is a town of 200 and two of her teammates are her cousins, everyone knew who she was and they were ready to embrace their new teammate. “She just fi ts in perfectly with everybody. Same sense of hu- mor, yeah just fi ts in,” said Jayden Woody who is a captain on the team and one of Tayla’s cousins. “It’s pretty awesome. It’s pretty cool knowing that my cousin is a badass. She’s the only girl on a football team and that’s pretty cool.” Aside from having to change in a different spot before prac- tices and games, she is just one of the boys on the team. “It’s unique, it’s different but it hasn’t been uncomfortable or weird at all,” said head coach Bill Shaw. “She fi ts in perfect- ly and… she’s just part of the group. No worse, no better. Just normal football stuff. There’s never any, ‘Hey, go easy on her.’ There are other kids that I’m more worried about people going easy on than her.” While the team fully accepts her and understand what she is capable of, she can still come as a surprise to her opponents. “They’ll always whisper something to their buddies,” said Tayla. “Or they’ll just stare me down, and then I obviously stare right back at them and we’ll have an intense competition there. And then they go easy on me because they think, ‘Oh, she’s a girl. We can take this play off.’ But then I hit them and they keep coming back harder and harder as I keep going harder and harder.” This was the case earlier this season when the Elks took on Camas Valley on the road. Camas Valley, currently ranked 5th in 1A, beat Elkton 52-6. In a game that would seemingly be one to forget, everyone remembers one particular play. “I told her that when she got into high school that I’m going to put you on the fi eld and there is going to be some guy on an opposing team that is either going to not take you for granted or say a derogatory comment or something like that and when that person does that I want you to pancake them,” said Hughes. “So we were at Camas and I put her in there and I think it must have been the fourth quarter,” Hughes continued. “And she lined up against, and I mean this kid was, oh I guess 180, 190 pounds. And she came up perfect. Perfect skill, perfect tech- nique and everything right in the chest plate, turned him and next thing you know he’s right on his back.” “She gets ahold of this kid, rolls him over and puts him on his back on the ground. Just watching that on fi lm is cool stuff,” said Shaw. “I mean, it means she’s all in and that’s the exciting part of it. She’s really a football player.” “It’s funny because against Camas I ended up right next to her and witnessed the whole thing and was like, ‘Oh god,’” said Jes- se Abraham, a senior captain on Elkton. “When she fl at backed that kid we were all like, ‘Oh wow.’” “And the referee goes oh, a couple adjectives you can’t say, and he goes, ‘Oop sorry.’ And then I guess one of the coaches from Camas goes, ‘I told ya, I told ya.’ So I mean, if you under- estimate her that’s a mistake,” said Hughes. “I love it when they realize that I’m a girl and that I’m kicking their butts,” said Tayla. MORE HD CHANNELS, FASTER INTERNET AND UNLIMITED VOICE. 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