Tough enough The Rhode Island Intensity mix girl power with the bone-crunching world of competitive tackle football BY BETH SCHWARTZAPFEL

THE FIRST THING you notice upon walking into the aerobics room at World Gym in Seekonk is that it’s stuffy and it smells. It smells like a boys’ locker room: sweaty gym socks, sweaty T-shirts, no windows. But 26 women are running in circles among the steamed-up mirrors and plastic ficus trees, wearing football helmets and preparing to battle in what some consider the sporting equivalent of war.

Although the Rhode Island Intensity, the Ocean State’s very own women’s tackle football team, has entered its second season in the Independent Women’s Football League with an 0-4 record, the squad’s spirit is unbowed. "We have six more games left, plenty of time to work out the kinks," says Tara Cramer, the Intensity’s owner and general manager. "If you were a spectator from the beginning of the season, you would be very impressed with how the team has improved. They are hungry for a win, and I believe this weekend, on our home field at Pierce Stadium in East Providence, they will be achieving this." The game against the Montreal Blitz will take place on Saturday, May 7 at 2 p.m.

The Intensity’s players are teachers, construction workers, computer geeks, students, police officers, and social workers, and all of them have made a serious commitment to a sport that, until recently, women just didn’t play. They range in age from 21 to 36. About half of them are mothers, and one is a grandmother. Some have been serious athletes all their lives, playing soccer, volleyball, or field hockey since they could walk. Others were never very athletic, but thought it was time to get in shape and have some fun while they were at it. Some of the Intensity are small and agile, while others are heavyset and imposing.

Before proceeding, a confession: prior to taking on this story, I thought football was for brutes. I thought it was a testosterone-soaked excuse for men to beat each other up. So when I heard about women playing football, I was intrigued. Perhaps there was something more to the game than I thought. Then again, perhaps these ladies were just in it to prove a point.

Proving a point is, indeed, part of it. Many of these women have spent their lives bucking convention in one way or another. So if someone (even a voice in their own head) implied that perhaps football wasn’t an appropriate activity, well, that was all the more reason to try it. But football is also exercise, good clean fun, and equal parts camaraderie and teamwork. What’s more, the Intensity aspires to be (one day, at least) a professional, moneymaking team, with stadiums full of screaming fans, basically like any other professional gridiron club.

Cramer, a 35-year-old resident of Dighton, Massachusetts, whose day job is in customer service at Boston Scientific, is thoughtful and unassuming, with broad shoulders and a raspy alto. She eventually hopes to pay her players and her coaches, and to provide health insurance and uniforms, but right now everyone is a volunteer, and team members have to pay their way. Fred Bird, the Intensity’s assistant general manager, says that money, however, really isn’t the point. "It’s something magical," he says, motioning toward Cramer. "She owns a football team. That puts her on the same scale as [New England Patriots owner] Bob Kraft!"

WOMEN’S TACKLE FOOTBALL is not an entirely new concept. The National Women’s Football League, founded in 1974, existed for almost 10 seasons, and such teams as the Oklahoma City Dolls and the Toledo Troopers had loyal followings. By the early ’80s, however, most of these franchises had closed shop. It wasn’t until the first few years of the 21st century that women’s football returned with a vengeance, with no less than 11 women’s football leagues established between 2000 and 2003 (seven, though, folded within two years).

The Independent Women’s Football League, or IWFL (www.iwflsports.com), of which the Intensity is part, is one of three national women’s tackle football leagues, and the only one that is a nonprofit organization. It has 26 teams divided into East and West conferences, plus five X-teams, probationary squads working toward full-member status. In addition to the IWFL, the Texas-based National Women’s Football Association has 15 teams, and the Nashville-based Women’s Professional Football League has 36 teams.

The Intensity was launched as an X-Team in 2004, and after a last year’s eight-game season, it entered the 2005 season as an Eastern Conference IWFL team. Nine games are on the roster for this year, against other teams in the North Atlantic portion of the conference, such as the Southern Maine Rebels and the New York Sharks. Cramer says the team is aiming to have at least 1000 fans in the stands for each game this season. (Asked how many supporters attended last year’s games, she laughed, "Do I have to answer that?," though she eventually estimated that there were a "couple hundred" fans at each game.) Unlike the NWFA, which plays during the conventional football season, IWFL and WPFL games take place in the spring. Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for kids (schedule and ticket information can be found at www.rhodeislandintensity.com).

The Rhode Island Intensity is actually the Ocean State’s second women’s tackle football team. The first was the Rhode Island Riptide, which lasted only one season, in 2003, before it dissolved for what Cramer calls financial reasons. The remaining infrastructure changed hands, and the team loosely reassembled as the Intensity. Financially speaking, the team is hobbling along. Since it aspires to be — but is not yet — a professional team, some of the concessions the team has had to make are frustrating. Cramer is having a hard time finding corporate sponsorships, for example, and the team’s overhead is high.

For each home game, the team must rent a stadium (the Intensity’s home field, Pierce Memorial Stadium in East Providence, costs $1000 per game), hire five referees, a scoreboard operator, and at least one security guard. Cramer says that a team can "bare bone" a season for about $25,000. She would like to provide a bus so the whole team can travel together to away games, and get hotel rooms for more distant skirmishes. But since there’s no money for these kinds of amenities, the players car-pool to away games for now.