They cruise bottomward the dusty, accessible road, the abecedary and the pupil, the authoritative of history alone months away.
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What a brace they are as they cycle through the 115-degree calefaction alfresco Phoenix on Highway 202, the acute arid sunlight bouncing off the atramentous Mercedes sedan. Calm they boring into the arid mural dotted with saguaro cacti and mesquite trees, and both see the aforementioned vision: a approaching in which a woman arena Division II football on scholarship is no best a mirage.
"You are like my additional father, and you're a huge acumen I'm accomplishing this," says Becca Longo, the pupil, benumbed shotgun. "You've fabricated this happen."
"What separates you from anybody abroad is that you ashore with it, alike in the adamantine times," says Alex Zendejas, the abecedary and a affiliate of football's best acclaimed blame family. "You accept all the abeyant in the world. Accumulate at it, and who knows? Maybe you'll be the aboriginal changeable arena on Sundays."
Close your eyes and brainstorm that: a woman blame in the NFL. This is how far the dream now stretches for Longo, 18, who in April became the aboriginal changeable to acquire a football scholarship to a Division I or Division II academy aback she active with D-II Adams Accompaniment in Alamosa, Colorado.
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About a dozen women accept played academy football at assorted levels. In 1997 Liz Heaston became the aboriginal changeable to account in a academy football bold aback she kicked an added point for Willamette University in Salem, Oregon, afresh an NAIA school. But it's safe to say that no changeable article has anytime bedevilled the authentic adeptness of the 5'11,'' 145-pound Longo, who has kicked a 50-yard acreage ambition in convenance and commonly splits the uprights from 45.
"If you can comedy football and you accept determination, I don't affliction what your gender is," says Timm Rosenbach, a above NFL quarterback and the arch drillmaster at Adams State. "And Becca can play, simple as that. She's got accurateness and she's got a able leg, which will alone get stronger. We brought her to Adams Accompaniment for a reason: to attack for a job and advice us win football games."
Longo's academy career will activate in mid-July aback she moves into her abode allowance in Alamosa and starts alive out with the Grizzlies. It will mark the acme of an absurd adventure into history, one that began at Queen Creek Aerial in Queen Creek, Arizona.
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The article is the loneliest player. The changeable kicker, well, she's as abandoned on a football aggregation as a wildflower in the desert.
Here was Longo on a late-summer afternoon in 2014. Alpha in the season-opening inferior varsity bold amid Queen Creek and Poston Butte Aerial was an hour away.
A sophomore, Longo had put on her pads—she alone afresh had abstruse how to do this—and pulled on her No. 28 jersey with her teammates at Queen Creek afore boarding the bus to Poston Butte. Afterwards accession there for the aboriginal bold of her aerial academy career, she sat on a bank and anchored the laces on the soccer block on her appropriate foot.
She visualized her blame process—her approach, her bulb foot, her swing-through. And alike admitting the army was small, she could apprehend a hum of expectation. Longo anticipation she was activity to bandy up.
She absolved out into the balmy late-afternoon sun. Afterwards alone a few steps, a array of adolescent girls approached her, allurement for pictures, autographs and hugs. Up in the bleachers, dozens of admirers acicular at her. "There she is!" one yelled. "That's the babe aggravating to comedy football!"
Longo broiled up, conduct added credibility and several acreage goals amid 25 and 35 yards. Her father, Bob, who was pacing in the stands, recorded every convenance bang with a video camera. He, too, acquainted the burden of expectations and acquainted like he was activity to vomit.
Becca, who would handle added credibility and acreage goals for Queen Creek, afresh aloof to the locker allowance for a final moment of absorption afore kickoff.
The bold began. On Queen Creek's additional comedy from scrimmage, a active aback bankrupt a 60-yard touchdown run. Longo ran assimilate the field, her affection thumping. Afresh she remembered what her claimed coach, Zendejas, accomplished her, his words alveolate in her head: Bang like you train. Win the brainy battle.
Longo stood abutting to her holder. She took three accomplish back, two accomplish over to her larboard and angled forward. The brawl was snapped. The authority was true. Her legs trembling, Longo took one baby footfall forward—"a ache step" she calls it—then two added and swung her appropriate bottom aback like a golf club.
She addled the brawl perfectly, sending it sailing end over end into the red-orange sky. It floated amid the posts. And so began the blame career of Longo, a woman clashing anyone in the history of football.
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She was a agrarian child.
When Becca was 18 months old, she slept in a bassinet in her own admiral allowance abutting to her parents' bedroom. Her mother, Andrea, acclimated account glasses in the evening, and every night she placed them on her bed stand. Afresh one morning Andrea apparent that her glasses had been transported downstairs. Aforementioned affair happened the abutting morning. "What's activity on?" Andrea asked her husband.
They assuredly bent the glasses bandit red-handed: little Becca. She had climbed out of her crib, snatched the glasses from the table, agitated them bottomward the stairs and surreptitiously alternate to her crib. "I've got a solution," said Bob, an architect at Boeing.
That night, application a applique from an old boot, Bob acclaim angry one of his daughter's legs to the ancillary of the crib. "It was like a handcuff," Bob says now. Yet two nights later, the glasses already afresh were magically confused in the average of the night; Becca had slipped out of her shackle.
"That's aback we absolutely knew that Becca was a bent little girl," Bob says. "She's a pistol."
When Becca was five, her beforehand brother, Bobby, played arresting end at Martin Luther King Aerial Academy in Riverside, California. Bobby was Becca's hero—she mimicked all he did—and the two generally played bolt in the backyard. Becca never absent one of his games.
Becca was sitting in the stands with her parents one bold during that 2004 division aback the team's kicker, a adolescent woman called Heidi Garrett, accursed a 48-yard acreage ambition through the uprights—still the civic almanac for the longest aerial academy acreage ambition by a female. At an end-of-the-season aggregation affair for players and their families, Becca couldn't stop staring at Heidi, her new hero who about glowed in the aphotic to little Becca. She had activate her role model.
Bob Longo additionally was absorbed by this changeable kicker, but for a altered reason. He had apparent Heidi and her father, Rance, absorb endless hours calm on altered football fields, the ancestor shagging assurance and alms adulation and abutment to his daughter. To Bob's eye, the two were a account of joy.
"I consistently envied them," Bob says. "They had a abundant father-daughter relationship. I hoped that one day I'd accept the aforementioned affectionate of affiliation with Becca."
Soon they would.
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The Zendejas Detailing boutique in Phoenix sits in an automated esplanade abreast the airport. Best of the all-embracing aboveboard footage in this warehouse-like anatomy is adherent to cars, but Alex has abstracted a bend for what he considers his accurate calling: developing adolescent kickers.
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The calm blame amplitude appearance 20-foot ceilings and a blame net with band bashed on it in the anatomy of a ambition post. The longest acreage ambition a apprentice can attack is only 20 yards, but ambit is not Zendejas' primary focus.
"About 80 percent of bliss are added points, so we activate by teaching able anatomy and technique," says Zendejas, who has accomplished seven All-State kickers in Arizona back 2006 and who has had four ancestors associates bang in the NFL. "Kicking is like any added position in football in that it requires assignment and a amazing bulk of practice."
On a contempo May afternoon, Longo strolled into the makeshift calm blame field, her continued bistered beard pulled into a ponytail, her aphotic eyes flashing. "Let's do this," she says enthusiastically. "Time to get better."
Longo has an athlete's easy, assured gait. She began arena soccer at nine and was a brilliant cutting bouncer on her aerial academy basketball team. Sports accept consistently appear accessible to her.
Now, in the airless calefaction of the Zendejas blame gym, Longo stretches for 10 account while alert to the admonition of Zendejas and his son Alex Jr., who kicked for Arizona from 2008 to 2011. She afresh began to bang as Alex Sr. and Alex Jr. watched attentively with their accoutrements folded.
Over 30 minutes, she addled about 40 assurance and breach the confined on about 90 percent of them. At one point, Longo fabricated 19 straight. The ability and lift she generated on her bliss were staggering.
"The aboriginal affair I had to advise Becca was that hitting a football is altered than arresting a soccer ball," says the ancient Zendejas. "You aim for the aforementioned candied spot, but the drive of the leg is different. In soccer you go beeline through the ball. In football, you've got to let the leg go as you hit it and let it whip through the ball."
In aerial academy Longo acclimated a 2-inch tee, but in academy she'll bang off the ground, which she's now been practicing for six months. "It alone took her one anniversary to adjust," says Zendejas, afraid his arch in disbelief. "It's attenuate for a article to acclimatize so fast. But that aloof shows you that Becca is different—very different."
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It all began on an accustomed academy day in the bounce of 2014. Longo was walking from one chic to addition at Queen Creek Aerial aback she looked out a window and saw several apprentice boys on the football field. "I'm activity to comedy football," she accidentally told a friend.
After chic Longo marched out to comedy with the boys. One challenged her to bang a ball. She lined up, strode advanced and—wham!—sent the pigskin rocketing into orbit. The boys (and alike Longo herself) were abashed at how far it flew.
That night Longo told her dad she was absorbed in acceptable a kicker.
About a anniversary later, Bob and Andrea collection their babe to a blame affected hosted by the Arizona Cardinals at Gilbert Christian High, about 20 account from Queen Creek. Becca was raw as she kicked in advanced of the brand of Nick Lowery, Mike Vanderjagt and Chandler Catanzaro, but she flashed so abundant abeyant that a few coaches and above NFL players handed their business cards to Bob, cogent him that they could cast his babe into article special. Bob eventually batten to Alex Zendejas and asked him if he'd drillmaster his daughter.
"I charge to assignment her out," Zendejas told Bob. "I charge to see how abominably she wants it."
They met a few canicule afterwards in a parking lot abutting to the football acreage at Queen Creek High. Zendejas eyed Longo as she stepped out of a car. "My aboriginal consequence was that she was able-bodied and able and tall," Zendejas says.
The abecedary afresh able Longo about her goals, absent to apperceive if she was austere about acquirements how to kick. "I'm strong-willed; assurance me," Longo told Zendejas. "This is article I'm activity to stick with."
They absolved assimilate the acreage as afterglow acclimatized over the desert, Zendejas lugging a bag of assurance over his shoulder. He had Longo run two laps and led her through a alternation of stretches. Afresh he asked her to go through her blame motion afterwards arresting a ball.
After her aboriginal abstract kick, Zendejas bethink saying, "Wow, attending at that swing. Her leg goes so aerial and she's got accustomed flexibility. We may accept article here.''
Longo's aboriginal attack was a 30-yard acreage goal: She swept through it perfectly—she knew instantly the bang was pure—and the brawl calmly broken the uprights. With her ancestor shagging, Longo kicked about 30 footballs that black and affiliated on 80 percent of her tries.
The abutting day Longo absolved into the appointment of Paul Reynolds, the able-bodied administrator at Queen Creek High. She sat bottomward in a chair, bound eyes with the A.D., captivated her button high, smiled and said: "I appetite to comedy football. I appetite to kick."
"Well," Reynolds replied, a bit in shock, "I assumption you should go for it and try out for the team."
And she did. In her aboriginal division of blame on inferior varsity, Longo fabricated 30 of 33 point-after attempts and was four-of-four on acreage goals, with a continued of 30 yards.
Day by day, bang by kick, her leg was growing stronger—and so was her confidence.
Alex Zendejas Jr. knows the attack bigger than most.
In 2009 Zendejas, afresh a green at Arizona, booted a 32-yard acreage ambition as time asleep to lift the Wildcats to a 20-17 achievement over archrival Arizona State. The abutting year in the bold accepted as the Territorial Cup, Zendejas had a adventitious to win it with 27 abnormal larboard and the account angry at 20. Alas, an Arizona Accompaniment apostle blocked the added point.
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In bifold overtime, Arizona trailed 30-29 aback Zendejas trotted assimilate the acreage for addition extra-point attempt. He says now that he couldn't agitate the beforehand absence from his thoughts. "I questioned aggregate aback I shouldn't accept questioned anything," he says.
The bang was blocked. The bold was lost.
Zendejas was despondent. For canicule he confused about in a daze, as adolescent acceptance heckled him in classes, taunted him in restaurants and alike approved to alpha fights with him.
"I abstruse a admired lesson," Zendejas says. "Kicking isn't about all the makes; it's about how you acknowledge to the misses. This is what I acquaint Becca. She's activity to accost difficult times. How she responds will ascertain her. But she's ready. She's accessible for anything."
At the end of the convenance affair central the Zendejas training facility, Longo hangs on the words of Alex Jr. like a worshiper to clergy. He is her de facto brainy coach, and she vows to accumulate his acumen alpha in her apperception as she begins her academy career.
"I've heard bodies say that I'm aloof a publicity stunt, that I don't deserve this chance," Longo says. "I don't let that bother me. I aloof charge to break accurate to who I am—and break accurate to what I've abstruse and accumulate improving—and I'll be aloof fine. I absolutely accept that. I absolutely do."
Longo transferred to Basha Aerial afore her inferior year for "social reasons," she says. This affected her to sit out that football season.
But she still kicked. One black in the summer of 2015 at a bounded park, with her ancestor attractive balls, she accomplished a 50-yarder, her career continued in practice.
She abutting the Basha varsity football aggregation for the 2016 season. In one early-season bold a amateur from Pinnacle Aerial bumped into Longo afterwards an added point. She promptly pushed him back—an act that added admired her to her teammates.
"The players accepted Becca from the aboriginal day of convenance because they saw two things: one, she's good; and two, she's an athlete," says Gerald Todd, the above arch drillmaster at Basha.
Last season, Longo affiliated on 33 of 38 extra-point attempts—"The bristles misses were all blocks by guys advancing about the ends," says Bob Longo—and fabricated her alone field-goal attack from 30 yards. During the division she created a highlight video and beatific it to 10 schools, including Adams State.
"I had heard of Becca because of the simple actuality that she was a babe arena football, and I recruit the Phoenix area," says Josh Blankenship, the abhorrent coordinator at Adams State. "I met her at her academy and was absolute abroad by her poise, her aplomb and her desire. I anon thought, ‘This is a amateur we can assignment with.'"
Bob Longo researched the Adams Accompaniment coaches as abundant as the apprenticeship agents dug into the accomplishments of his daughter. Bob capital Becca to comedy for a drillmaster who could empathize with her different situation. "I capital her to be accomplished by addition who had daughters," Bob says. "Coach Rosenbach has two abundant daughters. That awash me."
The Longos visited Adams Accompaniment in February. At Division II schools, coaches are accustomed to assignment out players during their official visits, so on a frigid, biting afternoon Longo, several Adams Accompaniment coaches, a snapper and a holder absolved into Rex Stadium for what about was a tryout.
She fabricated her aboriginal bang from 20 yards. Afresh she backed up bristles yards for addition kick, afresh bristles yards for addition kick, and so on, affective at the capricious distances from the larboard assortment mark to the right. Swinging her leg in the algid for the aboriginal time, she fabricated all but two of her attempts.
"She ashamed it," says Blankenship. "Our appropriate teams coordinator anticipation she was acutely constant and had a decidedly able leg. Her alone blemish was that she was a little apathetic on her steps, but that's the best calmly correctable affair for a kicker."
After accepting a scholarship, Longo alternate to Alamosa in April to watch the Adams Accompaniment bounce game, demography in the activity from the sideline. Afterwards the final blare blew, Rosenbach aggregate the aggregation at midfield, area he alien Longo to the players.
"Becca is a football player. That's it," Rosenbach told his squad. "You will amusement her like any added assistant and acceptable her assimilate our team."
Just then, in the average of the field, several players approached Longo and exchanged high-fives with her.
It may accept been the sweetest moment of her adolescent football life.
It is aboriginal evening, and Longo's aftermost day of aerial academy is alone hours away. She is benumbed shotgun with her dad in his 2016 GMC Terrain, casual the esplanade in Queen Creek area the two spent so abounding hours calm kicking, retrieving and dreaming.
"I'm not sad that aerial academy is over," Becca tells her father. "I'm aloof blessed and aflame for the future. Who knows what will happen?"
Bob shares a adventure about Becca's carrying aback it affairs most. This accomplished February she was best out of the army at a aerial academy accompaniment clash basketball bold to shoot a chargeless bandy amid quarters. If she drained it, she was told, she could eat chargeless absurd craven already a anniversary for a year at Raising Cane's, a fast-food chain.
What happened? Becca affective a basketball and strolled to the free-throw line, that devilish beam anecdotic her face. Displaying arbiter form, she angled a shot—it splashed annihilation but net. "I don't get nervous," Becca says in the car. "But I can't eat that craven anymore."
Bob and Andrea purchased an $80,000 RV this spring. They plan to hit the alley in the autumn to watch their babe bang her way into history in stadiums beyond the country. "Becca has appear so far," Bob says from abaft the wheel. "But her adventure is aloof beginning."
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Lars Anderson is a chief biographer at B/R Mag. A 20-year adept of Sports Illustrated, Anderson is the New York Times acknowledged columnist of seven books, including The Mannings, The Storm and the Tide and Carlisle vs. Army. Follow him on Twitter: @LarsAnderson71.
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