Natalie Randolph Wrap Up for Thought Catalog

So I've been following closely the career of coach Natalie Randolph, spent a couple of days down at Coolidge High with her, with the vice-principal and principal. I don't think would have had any kind of access were it not for my connection with the Pittsburgh Passion and coach Randolph's former football coach, Ezra Cooper. So, thanks Horton, Sully and Ezra, for helping me get my foot in the door.

All of my Natalie Randolph writings are at the "women's football" sidebar.

I'm hoping to report on her again in 2011, but here's the 2010 finished product, Introducing Coach Natalie Randolph for Thought Catalog.

Congrats to Natalie Randolph and the Coolidge Colts

I woke up to a message this morning that the Coolidge Colts won their first game, a victory over Anacostia by a score of 48-12.

Per Alan Goldenbach at the Washington Post:

'She ran the down the 50-yard line toward the Anacostia sideline and avoided it, but then Indians Coach Terry Dixon stopped her to offer congratulations. That allowed George Weaver the moment he and his Coolidge teammates had waited six weeks for - a chance to douse their coach in honor of her first victory, a 48-12 home triumph over the winless Indians (0-5).

"It means everything to me," Randolph said. "What they get out of it, I get out of it. I'm ecstatic for them. They needed it."

As the first female football coach in the Washington area - and one of just a handful in the nation - Randolph attracted unprecedented media attention, and it wore on the team as it lost its first five games.

On Friday, the Colts pulled away in the second half, allowing the excitement to build and build with each touchdown. Senior running back Chris Strong ran for four scores."

The first time I sat down with Randolph, she was working on the game plan for her first game on the computer in her empty classroom. We talked while she continued to work, so she seemed a little distracted from time to time.

In my preparations to meet her, it became obvious that the question on everybody's mind was -- who would be the first male coach to "lose to a girl" and what would that be like for him? (The horror!) I felt compelled to ask her about it, even though 'Battle of the Sexes' type things bore me.

She stopped, looked away from her computer and said that she thought that was a pretty stupid thing for people to be thinking about. She wondered herself, do those coaches not mind losing to other men? Why is losing ever acceptable? She didn't want to lose to anybody.

Randolph and her team endured several losses - five - before getting this first win under their belts. I am thrilled for her, for the players, the coaching staff, and the administration at Coolidge. I hope there are a lot more wins in the Colts' future.

Coach Natalie Randolph and Coolidge High School Football Update

The HBO crew was gone.

There were no ESPN reporters or cameras or boom mikes.

Not even a Washington Post or AP reporter was there for kickoff and no post-game press conference was necessary this time. Just the coach, her staff, the kids and a couple hundred people in the stands were left to mull over a disappointing last-second loss.

The atmosphere was a far cry from the first game Natalie Randolph spent on the sidelines at Coolidge High School, about a month ago.

It was hard to get a sense of the football program, the players, and just what kind of coach Randolph would be, with such media buzz around that first day. It was distracting and beyond which, Randolph had just spent several months juggling radio and television appearances, fielding never ending media requests, all while trying to put in place a coaching staff and playbook, run practices and prepare her teaching curriculum for the new school year. Mostly, that first day, Randolph seemed tired to me.

Things are quieter now. Coolidge was 0-4 heading into the September 24th non-conference game versus Forestville and Randolph seemed relieved that it was just me this time, no mob of media swarming around her, no bright lights, no television crews, no mad dash for press credentials. "That was awful, just awful," she said walking down the hall to the locker room.

The thing I noticed the first trip to Coolidge is that the powers that be -- the coaches, the teachers, the administration -- are buoyantly optimistic. This second trip, they remained palpably so. "You know, we're gonna win tonight," smiled Principle Thelma Jarrett when I ran into her in the parking lot a few hours before kick off. She meant it; that the Colts were 0-4 entering this game was irrelevant.

It started off with a bang. The Colts opened the game by running back the opening kick off for a touchdown, a 90 yard return by Keith Dickens.

Forestville tied the game, but Coolidge put up two unanswered touchdowns after that, the first set up by a bubble screen to Sticks (Dayton Pratt) and the second a 27 yard touchdown run right up the gut by Chris Strong.

It was the first time they held such a large lead. A win was possible.

Near the end of the 3rd quarter, Coolidge led 19-6, but Forestville drove for a touchdown and 2-point conversion that made the game 19-14. Around this time, a Washington Post photographer who had been on assignment at another high school arrived at the game after getting a call to head over and get photos of coach Randolph's first victory. Meanwhile, word had also spread through the neighborhood that Coolidge was up, but by then, with no ticket takers left in place, security couldn't let the crowd in in. Most of them hung around in the parking lot and listened to the PA announcer's play by play.

Coolidge's punter, who had been stellar all night, pinned Forestville at their own 1 yard line with seven minutes left in the game. Forestville picked up a first down. Five minutes left. Then another. Then an option run picked up 23 yards. 3:30 left. Then they picked up more yards and were in Coolidge territory. 2:30 left. They drove inside the 10 yard line with 1:21.

With the ball at the 1 yard line, for the first time, Randolph looked nervous. She also looked like she was trying to will a stop from her undersized defensive line from her position on the sidelines, crouched down silently.

But it was not to be. Forestville punched in the touchdown and tacked on a 2 point conversion to go ahead 22-19. Immediately, Randolph was back up and on the headset, talking to her coaches upstairs. Nat Randolph may be a young woman, but in that moment, she looked like every other coach I've ever seen who has just absorbed a body blow, but has to look forward immediately. She just sucked it up and moved forward.

The loss was disappointing, a heart-breaker really, as last second losses always are. But while I'm still mulling my notes, trying to put things in context, find themes and dramatic arc, Randolph and the Colts have to put this one behind them because they get another shot at that first win tonight versus Anacostia, a game that is a very winnable one for them according to folks who know a lot more about DC area high school football than I do.

Good luck Colts!

You can find photos of the Coolidge-Forestville game here.

Coach Natalie Randolph, a Modest Introduction

After the first football game of the 2010 season, a loss by the score of 28-0, head coach Natalie Randolph told the crush of reporters, "We lost a football game, that's all. We lost a football game."

She was right, of course, but somehow, with the ESPN guys, the Washington Post guys, several TV crews, anywhere from six to ten photographers on the ground and god knows how many print journalists ringing the track around the field, plus an HBO camera crew with prominent boom mike following Randolph's every move from pre-game warm-ups through the handshake line, it was easy to forget it was a high school football game.

It is a principle of physics that the act of observing will influence the phenomenon being observed. And so it was with the inaugural game of the Natalie Randolph Era for the Coolidge Colts.

I'm lucky enough to be working on a feature about Randolph and the Coolidge program. I spent all of last Friday at the D.C. high school, wandering the halls with the coach, with vice-principal Vernard Howard, meeting with the staff and principal Thelma Jarrett. That day? It felt special. It was undeniable.

The first week of school always feels different, but a big part of the reason this first Friday felt special was the anticipation of the Colts football game that evening. Typically, the first game for Coolidge would go unnoticed by all except the students, faculty, staff and alumni, but nationally the Natalie Randolph story has been treated as anything but typical.

The attention has been swift, overwhelming and unexpected, particularly by Randolph herself. In fact, when I asked her if she saw this attention coming, she said, "No, No!" and then had to laugh about it all.

Mostly because the school, the administration and the football players are known to Randolph, an environmental sciences teacher at Coolidge, she didn't really have to introduce herself to her team -- most of them already knew her.

I 'knew' her only as a football player. I first saw Randolph play in the 2006 NWFA championship, a game that her team, the D.C. Divas, won handily over the Oklahoma City Lightning. The Divas and the Pittsburgh Passion were respected rivals and Randolph's name has come up often in conversation with many of the Passion players I've interviewed over the years.

Walking the halls with her last week in search of a color printer she could use, one of her players came up to her with an effusive "Coach!" and gave her a big hug. Her response? "Where's your tie?" It was a good natured, warm admonition, as her players were all to wear shirts and ties last Friday and I sub-conciously spent the remainder of our walk picking out tie-clad young men.

Still in search of a printer, we passed some students on the stairwell, one of whom cussed in conversation with the other. I didn't even hear it but Randolph, like all teachers, has a singular ability to pick up on those kinds of transgressions and quickly correct them, which she did with a sharp, "Watch your mouth." The coach Randolph story may be all the rage and she, a young African-American woman coaching boys playing the manliest of sports, may be the media's darling, but she is still a science teacher trying to impart some knowledge and maybe plant the seed of interest in science in a few Coolidge students.

That is a fact not lost on Principal Jarrett, who chose Randolph not for her Divas resume or her years as a track star at the University of Virginia, but for her vision of athletics working hand in hand with academics. Her players attend a mandatory study hall every day for an hour when school lets out. Football is the carrot to get them there and the hope is, once there, with appropriate support, the boys can be successful student-athletes, with the emphasis on student.

When we picture a football coach, we have a certain image in mind. Grizzled. Square jawed. Male. But Randolph is none of those things. She is petite and pretty and young. Well, she is square-jawed and her jaw was set through much of Friday night's loss, prompting one of the photogs next to me to say, "She's so non-emotive. This is frustrating."

The game itself started almost too perfectly, as junior Calvin Brown took in the opening kickoff from the Carroll Lions and raced up the field into daylight. He had a pretty clear lane the whole way into the endzone, but slipped around the 46 yard line. The Colts put together a nice drive from there, but they made it hard for themselves, as they were penalized early and often. At some point in the game, I lost track, but there were three or four pre-snap penalties on Coolidge in their very first drive which I believe were directly attributable to nerves, the packed house and the throng of media rabble. After all, these are high school kids accustomed to several hundred people in the stands, not several thousand.

That first drive fizzled at the Lions' 3 yard line and the game remained scoreless into the second quarter before Carroll scored to make it 7-0 at the half. The Coolidge squad is young and undersized, they lost their best offensive player, Calvin Strong, to injury early in the first half and eventually they gave way to Carroll, which dominated the second half. With the score 21-0 late in the game, I made a note to myself that coach Randolph's biggest challenge at this point was to keep frustration and resignation at bay for her players.

The challenges are great for the coach. Her team is fast, but raw and small. It always takes time for a coaching staff to coalesce, and for the team as a whole, staff and players, to come together. It'll be interesting to see how Randolph handles it all, now that the initial rush of enthusiasm and commotion has passed.

I can hardly wait to get down to Coolidge again.

D.C. Area Names Woman Head Coach

From True/Slant on March 13, 2010:


D.C. High School Names Woman as Head Football Coach

Congratulation Natalie Randolph, former wide receiver for the D.C. Divas, who was named as the head football coach of the Coolidge High School team in D.C.

Randolph will run across some detractors and some people, no doubt. will be threatened by the notion of a woman leading a boys team, as Bob Cooke points out. (See Bob, this is why I never, ever read comments posted to stories. But then, I am a dinosaur.)

But Randolph’s most important job — winning over the locker room — is already done, according to the Washington Post, who broke the story:

One of the most difficult groups of people to potentially sway proved to be the most easily convinced. When Randolph met with about 40 members of the team in a school conference room on Tuesday afternoon, some of the players had already heard rumors of her appointment. After Principal Thelma Jarrett introduced Randolph, there was overwhelming applause because Randolph is a popular and well-liked teacher among the Coolidge student body.

Kate Sullivan, of the Pittsburgh Passion, texted me last night to let me know how thrilled she was for Randolph who is, according to Sullivan, “a grt girl.” (At least I think that was Sully’s text shorthand.)

As a player with the Divas, she won a championship and played in another championship game last year. I don’t know Coach Randolph personally, but I have seen her play. She’s a good player — disciplined, tough and smart. (Actually, most of the Divas are. That is one good team.)

I’m sure she’ll do well as the head coach, but it won’t happen overnight. It will take a while before that team takes on Randolph’s stamp. I see a road trip to D.C. a Coolidge High game in my fall plans.

For more on this story, which seems to have been picked up everywhere, the Diva’s website has links to all those stories and the Post’s photo gallery is great.