Chicago Force quarterback Sami Grisafe. (CBS)
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CHICAGO (CBS) — The Chicago Force is the best football team in town you may have never heard of.
They just finished the fourth undefeated regular season in their 10 years of existence. Prior to the playoffs they beat their opponents by an average of 53 points.
Impressed yet? Well, there are a few more reasons they’re a force to be reckoned with.
“People are usually surprised at first, but I think they’re intrigued,” quarterback Sami Grisafe says.
This is no powder-puff football team. It is 52 ladies playing full-tackle football.
“I coach high school football,” head coach John Konecki says. “The terminology we use in the fall with the boys is the exact same terminology we use with the women in the spring.”
The players range in age from 20 to 40 and consist of attorneys, architects, police, teachers, firefighters, musicians and a biological anthropologist. Several of the women travel three days a week from Wisconsin and Indiana, even downstate Peoria.
Yet they don’t get paid. It’s all for the love of the game and the competition.
“I stopped playing sports once I finished college. I needed something to fill the void. This totally took care of that,” linebacker Darcy Leslie says.
More than 60 teams nationwide play in the Women’s Football Alliance. Now in the middle of the playoffs, the Force is three wins away from a national championship, which will be played for the first time in a NFL stadium: Heinz Field, home of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
“That would be quite an honor to be able to stand on that field,” Grisafe says.
