Synopsis
Can a good Southern Girl play tackle football?
Yes, if she nurtures her dream and never gives up!
Mixing Fact and Fiction, BLACK & BLUE is a Powerful Novel about Fortitude and Determination, a Coming-of-Age Story for a New Generation of Women
Growing up in Zephyrhills, Florida, Toady loves nothing more than playing football. It isn’t surprising, given that football is a religion in the small Southern town. Indeed, a winning team is a cure-all throughout the South. But for Toady, the love of football is bittersweet – because Toady’s given name is Christine. She’s a girl, and girls “can’t” play football. Christine’s story, and how she beats the odds to become the owner of – and player on – a championship women’s tackle football team, is told in Andra Douglas’s new novel, BLACK & BLUE: Love, Sports, and the Art of Empowerment (BookBaby, July 2019).
Loosely based on the author’s own story, BLACK & BLUE chronicles Christine’s struggle to “get a slice” of the “pigskin pie” of life. The youngest of three sisters, she chafes against what the South tells her she should be. From childhood on, she loves football and plays exceptionally well. But she is denied a spot on the high school team, and by senior year, she watches unhappily as her male classmates win college football scholarships – knowing that for her it cannot be. Reluctantly, she puts aside her football dreams and moves to New York City, never expecting to play the game she loves – but life is full of surprises.
Douglas, the former owner of the New York Sharks Women’s Pro Football team and a player herself, paints a compelling picture of Christine’s struggle. But more importantly, BLACK & BLUE lays bare the complexity of being a woman who wants to play what has essentially been a man’s sport since it was first created. Once in New York, Christine hears rumors about women playing flag football on Fire Island. She rides the ferry over, clutching her ball – and there she finds her people. The women who will one day be her teammates on the New York Sharks.
This quirky, tough, and diverse group is held together by their love of the game. When, after several years of successful flag competitions, the Women’s Professional Football Association is launched, Christine becomes part of this new tackle league – against her better judgment, because she senses that something isn’t quite right. Before long, she discovers the truth – the Association has no funding and the team needs money and an owner if they want to compete. To keep her dream alive, Christine haggles and scrapes together the cash to buy the franchise.
And that’s when the tension really heats up. In order to create a championship team, Christine must make countless personal and financial sacrifices. Finding a coach who isn’t abusive is a struggle. Rallying team spirit is an endless quest. Add to that the loss of her one true love, the devastation of the September 11 attacks, and the sudden death of one of her players, and Christine’s dream seems doomed. Does she have the guts and the stamina to spite the odds? Will her sacrifices pay off?
BLACK & BLUE not only challenges gender stereotypes, but takes readers behind the scenes of one of America’s least understood sports. Readers will cheer Christine as she doubles down to fight for the women who want nothing more than to be allowed to play the sport they love. This is a story of empowerment that will inspire anyone who is struggling to fulfill their dreams.
Excerpt
INVITATION TO PLAY
I stand in the heat of the day, thinking this must be a mirage! I look again: a group of women is playing football!
By Andra Douglas
I am sorting socks one day and thinking that all of them can’t possibly belong to one individual when I realize that there are two companions I have overlooked—Me and Myself. After this realization, I view my existence as three entities sharing space in one body. It is a type of schizophrenia that I find comforting. Plus, it explains all the socks.
Time passes quickly and living in New York City means paying the Piper. It also means paying the doorman, the coat checker, the cabbies, the “super” in my brownstone and the woman giving out hand towels in the bathrooms of fine establishments. Life in New York City moves so fast that it seems as though events overlap. Unlike my beloved game of football, there are no time-outs, no half-times, not even any two-minute warnings. Even the traffic lights mean nothing. And all the horns honking make it so noisy. At home, the things with horns say “mooooo.” In New York, there are lots of nasty and maladjusted people. They swear loudly from the middle of the streets and write rude words on walls. The rudest thing on the walls back home was the day the “l” dropped out of “public” on the building we know as the Public Library. Nevertheless, I navigate this city well. And it is slowly becoming home.
“Come through, New York!” I say, aiming my words at the beautiful skyline at the southern end of the island. “Come through…”
Then one day it delivers something. A group of women who play football. Somewhere I hear that beach football is played on Fire Island. So one Saturday I take the ferry over from Sayville out on Long Island. I sit down in the sand holding my football like a security blanket and look for the football action.
Suddenly, like an apparition, Jessie appears next to me. Twenty-nine, slim, muscular and quite beautiful, until she opens her mouth, at which point you know for sure she is a true Brooklynite. Everything you hear is unruly and the opposite of what you might expect from her full and opinion-giving lips. She swaggers; even her gestures have an accent.
I take notice of her curly, unruly shock of short hair. She takes notice of the football in my hands. Then she speaks.
“Seen ya bwall,” she says.
“Yeah?” My slight southern dialect is not nearly as distinguishable as her ‘Brooklynese.’
“Wanna play wit us?” she romps around me in the sand like a puppy.
“Yeah. Ok.” Of course, I want to play! Who’s “us?”
I follow her down the beach and see a group of about fifteen women throwing a football to each other. The heat of the day, the sand…this must be a mirage, or a dream and Jessie is the ghost of football past. But as we approach, I can see that they are still there. An entire group of athletic women and they are playing football! Jessie introduces me.
“Hey! Found another player for the game today. Maybe for the Sharks, too!” They greet me with sandy handshakes, and soon they are telling me about their team named the Sharks in a league in Brooklyn where they all live.
“It’s flag football,” announces a woman named Sarah who says ‘ flag’ like she’s just discovered rancid milk in her lunch pail. She is sitting in the sand putting a pink band-aid on her toe, and her long blonde hair drapes around her knees as she leans forward. Flag football. Alright, maybe it isn’t the spot on the Miami Dolphins I dreamed of as a child, but at least I can play my favorite game and meet people, too.
“But it IS full contact,” Sarah is quick to throw this in, as if embarrassed that they don’t play tackle. They all nod in agreement, grateful that Sarah has pointed this out. She is the EF Hutton of the group. Everyone listens. “Plus, it’s all we have.” She adds as a light afterthought. “So…let’s play…is it Christine or Chris?”
“Christine.” She stands up and her stature is not nearly as big as her presence. About 5’4”, Sarah has a thin, athletic but curvy body. She begins to trot away from the group and puts her hands up signaling for me to throw her the ball. I feel like I just reached heaven and as I whip the football in her direction, I hear several murmurs and a grunt of approval from Jessie, “That lil’ ‘ol skinny arm can send that ball!” she says and Jessie grunts again, but is smiling. Someone named Dulce is waving for me to throw the ball to her, so I zing one her way. She catches it effortlessly and grins at the others.
“Aiiight!” she says, and Sarah is kind enough to translate.
“That’s ‘alright’ in Puerto Rican, Christine.” Then she laughs as a cacophony of ‘aiiiights’ fill the beach air. We play most of the day and the only reason we stop is because Sarah’s dad, Thomas, is picking a group of the players up at the dock in a boat.
I sit in the sand after everyone is gone, tossing the football in the air against the blue sky, reliving moments that made my adrenaline flow: Jessie catching my pass in the end zone and rushing back to the huddle full of excitement. “I didn’t think you saw me!” But I did! Or after I was flushed out of the pocket and ran for a long gain; as we returned to our side of the ball, Sarah flipped her long hair around and, in a playful taunt, told the defense I was the fastest one on the field. These are the things I want to feast on, and the more I eat, the hungrier I become. I lie down in the sand to digest the delicious moments. The clouds form the X’s and O’s of the playbook in my head. I will go home, gnaw these memories to the bone and be ravenous in the fall when I play flag football in Brooklyn with my new friends.
Excerpted from BLACK & BLUE by Andra Douglas (BookBaby/2019). Available at Amazon
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About the Author
ANDRA DOUGLAS is a native of central Florida and a graduate of Florida State University and Pratt Institute. A national champion athlete in rugby and women’s tackle football, she was the owner of the New York Sharks Women’s Pro Football team for nineteen years and is the founder of the Fins Up! Foundation for Female Athletes, a non-profit to benefit at-risk teens. In addition to her love of football, Andra is a professional artist and served as a Vice President/Creative Director at Time Warner for many years. Today, she lives with her parrot, ‘Pie’ in New York’s Greenwich Village where she creates mixed-media artwork.
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