Last Friday’s game was one for the history books, both for debuting the first female varsity football player for Garretson High School, but also having that player score the winning field goal, which was the proverbial icing on the cake.
Anybody who has paid attention to GHS sports the last few years will know Jenna VanHolland, and you’ve also likely seen her in this newspaper as related to her activities in 4-H. She’s been a solid player on our soccer team, and she’s still on that team’s roster, so she’ll be pulling double duty for this coming season!
GHS kicker Cody Erickson left some big shoes to fill when he graduated last spring, but VanHolland truly stepped up to the ball, and gave it a good kicking Friday night.
She was featured on KELO news on Friday and over the weekend.
“It was definitely not what I was expecting,” she said. “Especially to end on that good of a note, you know what I mean. It’s just crazy to think about, because I never thought that would happen on the first game, let alone this season. Everybody was jumping on me, and then all of a sudden people from the crowd started coming out and we just had this big huddle going on, and I remember Coach after the game held his arms out and picked me up and gave this big hug. It was the best feeling ever.”
“It was one of those surreal moments,” said head coach and GHS MS/HS principal Chris Long. “I think that as a football coach, you try to stay calm and collected somewhat in big situations whether it’s going well for you or maybe going bad, and as some of the videos show, I kind of lost it. She’s probably only had 35 or 40 reps where we had snap, place, kick, and we timed it, and her timing between our snapper doing a good job and our holder doing a good job was somewhere right around 1.25 seconds, which is very very good.”
Traditionally, football has been a male only sport. Only in the last few years has that truly begun to erode, and teams have welcomed players, no matter their gender. The fact that this is the correct decision could not have been made more apparent than it was last Friday night, when having VanHolland on the team made all the difference. Go back in time, just a few short years, and VanHolland’s talent and contributions might have simply been ignored and not valued.
