'It changed my life': How tackle football is a growing option for high school girls in Ontario

Trista Thompson worries that once she graduates from high school her football career might end.

Thompson is a Grade 12 student at St. Benedict Catholic Secondary School in Sudbury, Ont. and plays as a middle linebacker for the school's girls' tackle football team.

Because girls' full-contact football is so new at Ontario high schools, the team has to travel to Toronto and Ottawa to find opponents.

After Thompson graduates, her options with the sport in Ontario will be limited. 

"I'm really hoping that they start up like a league for us to go and play because there's nothing right now and I think that would be really fun," she said.

"I would definitely join if there was something coming up."

Two years ago St. Benedict was Sudbury's first – and remains the city's only – high school to start a girls' tackle football team.

Thompson said she was unsure about playing football at first, but when a lot of her friends joined the team she gave it a shot. And she fell in love with the sport.

"I want to change, like, the way football is seen and inspire other girls that are younger than us to come up and do the same thing," she said.

Milana Hickey, a Grade 10 student at St. Benedict and a running back with the team, says she feels the same way about the sport.

"I was scared and it changed my life," she said about giving football a chance.

"It's one of the sports that I focus on the most now and I couldn't imagine myself not playing it."

By the time she graduates from high school, Hickey could have more opportunities to play full contact football than her older teammate.

On May 5 Football Canada announced an agreement with NFL Canada, which it says will improve opportunities for women's flag and tackle football.

Over the next three