Women's Footy Blasting Off

For the past two years, the USFooty National Championship tournament has featured a Women's exhibition match.  In 2003 at Kansas City, the first women's match in North America was held between the Orange County Bombshells and a team of All Comers. In February 2004, the Bombshells traveled to Phoenix to take on the Arizona Lady Hawks.
Women's matches were a regular part of the 2004 California Australian Football League season.
At the 2004 USFooty championships, we decided to mix up all the players to create evenly matched teams.  A strong contingent of Atlanta women came out and played fantastic in their first game of footy – most were Gaelic football and/or rugby players.   They had such a great time playing that they decided to form a local women's team.  Wayne “Krazz” Kraska of the Atlanta Kookaburras stepped up to coach and Atlanta women's footy is born. 
With women's teams having played matches or being formed in California, Arizona, Atlanta, Milwaukee, Minnesota, Tampa, and New York/NJ, Kathryn Hogg, the newly appointed USAFL women's director, is proud to announce that the 2005 USFooty Championships will include the inaugural USFooty Women's  Championship.
The Women's Division will be played under the slightly modified women's rules:
1.a wrap up is used in lieu of a tackle
2.metro sized fields and teams sizes (approximately 9 a side)
3.the Burley women's footballs will be the official football.  These balls will be stocked in the usfootystore.com soon.
However, there will be some flexibility based on the desires of the teams competing.  Since so many teams are in their formative stages, we will combine partial teams or individuals.  Any woman who wants to compete will be able to play!
“The beauty of being involved in footy in the United States is that things that start small, grow rapidly. This is the case of women's game at the Nationals. Milwaukee is pleased to announce that at this years Nationals we will be expanding and hosting the first Nationals Women's Tournament. This will help make Nationals even a bigger event for all involved" said Tara Lee, the National Championship Coordinator.
Any club with a women's side or women players who are interested in the 2005 Women's Championships should contact Kathryn at kjh@womensfooty.com.
Looking to the future, the inaugural women's championships is a major step towards fielding a women's national team that will travel to Australia for the 2008 International Cup coinciding with the 150th anniversary of Aussie Rules.

- Kathryn Hogg
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