When you're the only girl on an all-boys' high school football team, it's important that your teammates treat you like family, and are willing to work with you on the field.
At least that's what Isla David has learned. The 16-year-old athlete just completed her football season as the only girl on the Auburn Drive High Eagles' team in Cole Harbour, N.S., earning the championship title with her teammates last week.
David said as the only girl on the team she was nervous at first, but the boys quickly made her feel comfortable in the sport. "They just didn't treat me different or look at me differently, so I just felt like a teammate," David told CBC Radio's Information Morning Halifax on Monday. "And when there [were] people giving me a hard time on the other teams, they stuck up for me, so I knew I had people that had my back." David said she grew up watching her brothers play tackle football, but she's always played flag football. "She fell in love with that right away," said Ian David, Isla's dad who was her first flag football coach. "And everyone was like, 'She should play tackle, she should play tackle.' I'm like, 'No, not my baby.' And here we are, two years in, a 45-[yard] kick later, right?" he said with a laugh.
David said she's been tackled during games before, but it doesn't happen very often because she's a kicker. That has brought her dad some comfort, but he still remembers the first time she was hit. "It was a bad snap.