Ally Cleveland, player on the women's pro football team Utah Falconz and a coach for 10- and 11-year-old players, with her dog, LiaRhea.A coach in a white bucket hat paced along the sideline of a youth football game, casually tossing a ball into the air.
The Mustangs’ coach, Ally Cleveland, shuttled her players on and off the field, yelling instructions and affirmations to the dozens of boys and one girl on her team.“Those were some beautiful blocks!”“It’s a beautiful day to throw the ball, so let’s do it!” Growing up as a boy in a small town in Michigan, Cleveland started playing football at age 7. Football was important to the community. It was the thing people did. It was the thing Cleveland’s father did. So, it was the thing Cleveland did.
“We were fearful of skipping a practice and making a mistake,” said Dave Kadau, who was Cleveland’s teammate in high school.That high school team was very good. It only lost two games in four years. One of those losses came during Kadau and Cleveland’s senior year. It was the state quarterfinal. Their coach was so bitter about the loss, he didn’t speak to the players for the rest of the year, Kadau recalled.
But she was still trying to feel like she belonged. And she was running out of time. The level of play in the WNFC has risen dramatically since its founding just five years ago, and Cleveland knew she was not as fast or as strong as she used to be. What edge she retained, she figured, came from her knowledge of the game — her decades of experience, even if it was once punctuated by a long spell away from the gridiron.
People say the three R’s of education are “reading,” “writing,” and “arithmetic.” Cleveland said they really are “relationships,” “relationships,” and “relationships.”At Hillsdale, 84% of the students are members of racial minorities, according to the Granite School District. Across that district, more than 50% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch — a common marker of economic need. At Hillsdale, it’s closer to 80%.
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