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16 — November 12, 2020
news letter journal Sports
editor@newslj. com
Play like a girl: Beastrom makes Dogie history
Emily Beastrom
Sonja Karp
NLJ Sports Reporter
Her motivation wasn’t to
blaze any trails, but when
senior Emily Beastrom donned
her helmet and shoulder pads
and stepped onto the gridiron in
Hot Springs for the first time in
August, she did just that.
Beastrom wanted to play
football since her freshman
year in high school, however
her physical size was just too
small to risk going toe-to-toe
against the big upperclassmen
classmen who suited up.
“I asked Conz [Matt
Conzelman] if he would let me
play but he wouldn’t because
he just wasn’t comfortable
with putting me out there,”
Beastrom began. “And it did
make sense but I wasn’t ready
to give up on the idea.”
Finally, in her senior year
her persistence paid off and
Coach Conzelman gave her
the okay to join the team.
The first day that Beastrom
showed up to practice, she
made history at Newcastle
High School by becoming the
first female to play for the
Dogie football team.
“I was super excited that
he said yes, and I intended to
play in more roles than just
a kicker,” Beastrom admitted.
“But then I tried practicing
with the guys for the first few
days, and I decided that I just
wanted to kick.”
Beastrom is a long-time
soccer player, having begun
to play fiitbol at the age of
4. On the soccer. pitch, she
~ plays defense and has expe-
rience putting the boot to
the ball owing to the fact
that she has been largely
responsible for goal kicks
throughout the course of her
high school career.
That experience gave her
the confidence to take the huge
risk of taking on a sport that is
almost exclusively male.
“I’ve seen so many guys
kick, and I thought that looked
like a lot of fun, so I wanted
to try it,” Beastrdm said with
a smile. “I knew I had some
things to learn, but I felt like I
had a pretty good background
to do okay.”
It took a minute for the
guys on the team to accept
Beastrom, however after she
demonstrated that she was
there to play and to be part of
the team, the Dogies embraced
the idea and were very sup-
portive of her presence on
their squad.
“They did pick on me a little
until I stood up for myself,
and after that they were really
nice to me and thought it was
super cool to have a girl on
the team,” Beastrom laughed.
Photo courtesy of Cindy Corley
In this photo from earlier in the season against Hot Springs, Emily
Beastrom is set to kick
off on the punt return.
“They didn’t treat me the same
as they did the other guys com-
pletely though. Like when they
would give each other slaps
on their backsides, they would
stop when they came to me.”
There were other aspects
of the team from which
Beastrom was excluded, and
not everyone she encoun-
tered was as accepting of her
playing a guy’s sport as her
teammates were.
“It was fun, but I was left out
of a lot of things like pre-game.
Obviously, I’m not allowed in
the locker room so I missed
out on the camaraderie that
went on in there,” she began.
“I changed by myself and tried
to get hyped by myself so that
was kind of a bummer.”
“I made a lot of memories
and a lot of great friendships,
but I also got a lot of dirty
looks from other teams and
other girls,” she continued.
“But I had so much fun doing it
and I would totally do it again.”
Beastrom specialized in
kicking the point after touch-
down (PAT), onside kicks and
pooch kicks for the Dogies.
Throughout the season, she
was 5-7 for PATs with the two
that she missed being blocked
rather than an error on her part.
As far as onside kicks go, her
team was able to recover one
of them against the Wheatland
Bulldogs.
“My favorite moment was
when I scored my first point
in the first game of the season
in Hot Springs,” Beastrom
grinned. “And when the team
recovered my onside kick in
Wheatland, that was pretty
cool too.”
When it came to kickoffs,
however, Beastrom was not a
fan. One reason for her lack of
excitement regarding that role
was that she admittedly didn’t
possess a “big boot,” so she felt
a little pressure to get distance
on the kick. The main reason
she preferred to remain on the
sideline during kickoffs was
that, as the kicker, she would
also take on the role of safety
and in the event an opposing
player got past the rest of the
defense, it would be left to her
to bring him down before he
could get in the endzone.
“I really don’t like to tackle
so I was always hopeful that
I wouldn’t have to do that,”
she chuckled. “Fortunately, the
guys were able to stop them
before they got to me every
time I had to do it.”
As a kicker, Beastrom was
protected most of the time from
being hit, but she didn’t come
out of the season unscathed.
In a junior varsity contest she
was actually hit, and knocked
down twice, and the second hit
resulted in a bone bruise that
sidelined her for a week.
“The first time he hit me, I
just went down, but the second
time I was in the process of
kicking and that one hurt,” she
explained. “It was a JV game
so there wasn’t any roughing
the kicker called on either
hit, but there probably should
have been.”
Seeing a girl suited up on
the sidelines certainly doesn’t
happen very often, but parents
and fans seemed to be receptive
to the idea.
“At one of our home games
a lady approached my mom and
asked if I was her daughter,”
Beastrom began. “She said
she was hoping they’d put me
in because she wanted to see
me play. Quite a few people
seemed to be pretty excited to
see me get out there.”
Beastrom stated that she is
proud that she was able to play
the game she had longed to
play, and hopes that her success
will be an inspiration to girls in
the future to try new things and
take a chance.
“I know that there is an
eighth-grade girl who actually
played this year, so maybe
she’ll continue in high school,”
she nodded. “I don’t know that
I’m a trailblazer necessarily,
but I hope my example will
give girls the courage to try if
they want to.”
Fortune: Don’t kiss an elephant on the lips today
and eating an elephant.
At the end of any meal in a
know what this needs? Paper!”
our fortune cookies. I won’t eat
on’t you hate it when you’re
D having a conversation or
reading a story, and all of a
sudden, the topic changes. There’s
no segue, not even a mention of what
the other person changes the topic
too. They just change the subject.
And if you try to bring
them back to the original
topic, they come off as if
they are highly offended.
But I want to make it
clear, right here and now,
it is us, who have to play
catch up, who should
be offended. I mean,
it’s rude, isn’t it, when
you are talking about
something like flowers,
and all of a sudden, they
start talking about elephants without
the segue?
Segue!
Speaking of elephants — my wife
was offended by my last column. I
don’t think it was the false statement
that I made about hunting in Africa
that offended her. She is used to
what she considers lies in these little
stories I write, but I feel colorful
modifiers. I think it was that I would
even entertain the idea of shooting
We:
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“It wasn’t a baby elephant,” I
told her, “It was a medium-size
elephant. And it wasn’t like I was
eating it while it was alive. Afier all,
it was cut up into bite-size pieces.”
That didn’t make any difference to
her. Any elephant, small,
medium or large, was off
limits, especially as food.
You see, Comic thinks we
should love the elephants.
And it is that idea that
brings me, logically, to
Chinese food. Well, not
the food, but it does have
a connection to the fortune
cookie. Now get that con-
fused look off your face. I’ll
explain it.
About 12 years ago or so, Connie
and I lived in San Antonio, and we
decided to go to the zoo. The San
Antonio zoo is a world—class zoo. It
was one of our favorite go-to spots
in that city.
But before we went to the zoo,
it was lunchtime, so we went to a
Chinese buffet. San Antonio also
has some of the best Chinese food
I’ve ever eaten, and that includes a
couple of buffets.
Chinese restaurant, you get a fortune
cookie. Some people think this
is an American invention. It isn’t
exactly. This cookie was invel‘ltbd
at the Japanese Tea Gardens in San
Francisco by Makoto Hagiwara
sometime between 1907 and 1909,
so we’ll call it in 1908 because that
is sometime between 1907 and 1909.
Of course, we all know what
the fortune cookie is. It’s a thin,
crispy sugar cookie folded on itself a
couple of times and baked to a hard,
rigid, crunchy gag-you—in-the-throat
wafer that breaks into sharp knife-
edge shrapnel and tastes like arti-
ficial oranges, vanilla and sadness.
But it’s not the cookie you’re after,
unless you are that one wanting to
have something sharp, hard and oh-
so-not-tasty jammed in between your
teeth and gums, piercing to your
jaw bone and dislodging a tooth.
How lovely! But, for the rest of us,
what we’re after is stuffed inside
that piece of orange-and—vanilla—
flavored wood plank. You see,
sometime shortly after inventing this
thing, Hagiwara was eating one and
bleeding profusely from the mouth.
Then he thought to himself, “You
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guess that was to soak up the blood.
So, he put the fortune inside the
cookie and gave it to China. He also
insisted that it was now part of their
cultural heritage! It’s no wonder that
China has had it in for Japan forever
and a day! But they’ve also been
imposing it on us ever since then
because we allowed Hagiwara to live
in the United States.
That’s okay. I mean, who doesn’t
love the profound wisdom found on
those pieces of paper. I particularly
loved one I got many years ago that
read, “Thank God, I’m finally out of
that cookie. 10, 23, 38.” That was
one of those life-changing events
for me. .
But what does this have to
do with elephants? you may ask.
Remember, I was talking about
elephants. This is a story about ele-
phants, so don’t change the subject.
Connie and I were going to the
zoo after lunch, as I said. Connie
knows that I am particularly fond
of elephants. I do love that animal.
They are fascinating and delicious,
but don’t tell Comic I just men-
tioned that aspect of them.
We finished our lunch and got
them because they’re nasty. But I
will read the slip of paper. Now, I
am not making this part of the story
up. Y’all can ask Connie if you’
don’t believe me. She’ll corrOborate
what I’m writing unless I’ve failed
to fulfill the ever-shifting honey-do
list. So, it might be better for me if
you didn’t ask her. But, my fortune
cookie said the following: “Don’t
kiss an elephant on the lips today.”
Again, I’m not making that up. Not
only did the fortune realize that we
were headed for the zoo and that I
love the elephants, it knew that if I
were tempted to kiss an elephant on
the lips, but it would also have been
that very day! Since then, I have
tried to figure out what part of the
elephant would have been okay for
me to kiss on that particular day.
I handed it to Connie, and she
started laughing with gusto.
So, we went to the zoo, and I
watched the elephants. I started
laughing about what had happened.
It was only much later that it struck
me. Maybe I should have gone back
the next day for that elephant kiss
I had missed. After all, that female
elephant was a beauty!
as