Tough enough (continued)

AS THE INTENSITY ran though a pre-season drill on a Saturday in March, the shining sun warmed the players scattered on the grass. The team has gathered at the field outside the Linden School in Middletown for its first outdoor practice of the season. Kim Hampson, a second-year member, shows off her new cleats. They’re black, with a red Nike swoosh symbol. Stitched in red letters on each foot is Hampson’s nickname, "RED," and her jersey number, 60. Kicker Smush Sermuksnish, No. 13 ("Smooshie" to her teammates — yes, Smush is her given name), admits that she, too, picked out her silver and blue cleats for primarily aesthetic reasons — they match the Intensity’s blue and white uniforms. Brandi Barnes, 29, a chef at SeaFare’s American Café in Newport, tries on her helmet for the first time this season and groans as she snaps on her chin guard, exclaiming, "I forgot I have a lip ring this year." Stacey Martin, 31, a rookie team member and stay-at-home mother of three, is getting used to running with her "shell" — the protective shoulder, thigh, and hip pads. "It makes me feel out of shape," Martin says.

The mood here is one of excitement, of possibility, of best friends telling each other summer break stories on the first day of school. "I woke up at seven o’clock this morning like it was Christmas," says Smooshie, 25, a social worker for the Massachusetts Department of Social Services. And though he will spend the entire practice teasing the players and generally giving them a hard time, assistant head coach Michael Correia says, "That’s really what it is — it’s supposed to be fun. If it’s not fun, you really have a problem."

These ladies don’t seem to have a problem. "We have an awesome group," says Maggie Koosa, No. 75, one of the team’s co-captains. "We’re really tight knit. We go out together all the time — we play pool, go dancing, go out to eat." In addition to playing for the Intensity for the last year, Koosa, 29, a high school math teacher, has played volleyball, as part of the New England-based Yankee Volleyball Association, for almost 10 years (she even has a volleyball tattooed on her ankle). She says the Intensity players are closer than her other teammates: "In volleyball, we’re our own separate entities, but we try to mesh on the court. Here, we mesh on the field and off the field."

In some ways, what seems like an instant bond between the team members is surprising, considering the differences among many of the women. As Hampson, the only grandmother on the team, (but also, as she is quick to point out, one of three 36-year-olds on the team — and not the oldest, either), says, "For a lot of people, we wouldn’t run into each other any other way. Football is all we have in common."

There is, however, a common spirit that these ladies have in common — a certain grit, and shared experience. "I grew up in an area where being different wasn’t accepted," says Stacey Martin, "but I was different anyway. Girls didn’t want to hang around me, because I was a tomboy and boys didn’t want to hang out with me, because I was a girl." Martin wanted to play soccer at her high school in New Jersey, but there wasn’t a women’s soccer team, so she played field hockey instead. The drive that pushed her to sports remains stronger than any obstacles in her path. "Sports kept me sane and kept me out of trouble," Martin recalls. "I was going to play, no matter what."

Charlene Casey, a certified athletic trainer from Taunton, Massachusetts, and one of the Intensity’s co-captains, says she has always wanted to play football. "Forget baseball. Football is America’s sport," she asserts. After growing up watching friends play Pop Warner, a nationwide youth football league for boys, and always longing to participate, Casey played rugby in college, thinking it might satisfy the urge. But rugby was not football, and she still wanted to play. "I was always told, ‘You’re a girl. You can’t play that,’ " recalls Casey, 36. "I didn’t like that answer." She still isn’t taking no for an answer. Not when she tore her Achilles tendon, not when she sprained two ligaments in her knee, and certainly not when people give her a hard time about her age. "My parents are like, ‘Why? Aren’t you getting a little old?’ But I’m not ready to give it up," she says.

Sometimes the person calling you wimpy is you. The Intensity has its share of players who had to overcome their own notions of just what they were capable of. Hampson, a civil, structural, and architectural designer who was Albion’s fire commissioner when she first joined the team, didn’t expect to like football at all. "I mean, I have two kids," she recalls. "I was just, like, a mom. Playing football didn’t seem like a mom-ly thing." Now, she says, her whole family is involved. Her mom manages the team’s books, her best friend, Fred Bird, was recruited to be the team’s assistant general manager, and her daughter plans to play when she turns 18 next year.

Julie Manfred, 28, from Westerly, is a rookie this season. Even her two sisters, who are both on the team, and for whom Julie cheered on the sidelines all last year, said, " ‘You can’t play. You’re too wimpy.’ So of course," recalls Manfred, "I had to play."

The Intensity’s Super Bowl party, held at the International Yacht and Athletic Club in Newport, not surprisingly, got a little raucous this year. Somehow, at half time, Stacey Martin found herself lying on a pool table. When someone proposed the idea of a bench-press contest, Martin recalls thinking to herself, "OK, I can do 10 pounds." The first person to climb onto the pool table proceeded to press 10 pounds. The next person did 13. When it was Martin’s turn, the ante had been upped to 40. Stubborn as ever, she bench-pressed 41. And what did her defeated teammate say? " ‘I was beat by a mom!’ " Martin laughs. "I was like, ‘but look at me! I’m a cool mom!’ "