Junior Torres says his 13-year-old daughter, Anna Melissa Torres-Espino, isn’t one to look for attention or try to stand out from a crowd. She would rather get along with everyone and be part of a group.
“She doesn’t have a very dominant kind of personality to her. She’s not a Type A,” Torres said. “But she is willing to try just about anything.”
That includes playing on boys tackle football teams. Torres-Espino is in her third year as a kicker, first at Blessed Sacrament School in 2021 and these last two seasons at Hancock Day School, where she is in the eighth grade.
Anna Melissa Torres-Espino, left, with her father, Junior Torres, center, and her brother AJ Torres. (Photo by Erika Espino-Torres)
“When people ask me what sports I play and I tell them football, they’re really surprised by it,” said Torres-Espino, who also plays this fall for a Tormenta Academy club soccer team. “It makes me proud that my team accepts me as a football player.”
She was inspired by another talented soccer player who also kicked at Blessed Sacrament, Alexis Spisso, now a student at St. Vincent’s Academy.
The succession didn’t stop there, as Blessed Sacrament seventh-grader Liv McNamara, 12, kicked last season for the junior varsity (grades fifth and sixth) and this season on the varsity (seventh-eighth).
McNamara, whose dream is to play professional soccer, said she got the idea to play football from her good friend Torres-Espino, who used to be part of the Savannah United soccer organization.
McNamara’s current Savannah United 2011 Girls Premier teammate Charlotte Clark, a Blessed Sacrament sixth-grader, joined the JV football squad this season and also is making a big contribution as a kicker.
Charlotte Clark, left, and Liv McNamara are also teammates on the Savannah United 2011 Girls Premier club soccer squad.
[Photo by Nathan Dominitz/Special to Prep Sports Report]
“There was Alexis, then Anna Melissa and then Liv. I was like, ‘I can do it,’ ” said Clark, 12, adding that she wouldn’t be out there if it wasn’t for the others. “Probably not because it was just random there was a girl kicker. I probably wouldn’t have had the idea.”
Other girls have played football at Savannah-area middle and high schools, including former Hancock student Anna Bridges (A.B.) Smith, who was a running back and safety in her first season in 2017.
For right now in the Savannah Parochial Athletic League (SPAL), there seems to be a relative run on female kickers.
“(Anna Melissa) likes for other kids, especially girls, to know that they can do it,” Junior Torres said. “Just because it’s a boys’ sport, they shouldn’t shy away from trying, even if it’s just kicking. That’s kind of what inspired her to try out and be a part of it.”
Anna Melissa Torres-Espino at practice with the Hancock Day School varsity. (Photo by Erika Espino-Torres)
Read Brennan has been coaching football for over 10 years, the past six at Blessed Sacrament, where he is the varsity coach. He doesn’t recall seeing girls on teams until recently. He points out that the Irish’s 2024 varsity team could have two female kickers.
“Charlotte’s an incredible kicker. She can boot the heck out of the ball,” Brennan said. “Next year, we’ll have to have a competition because Charlotte will be in seventh grade and Liv will be in eighth.”
Charlotte Clark kicks an extra point for the Blessed Sacrament junior varsity this season. [Photo by Spicer Snapshots]
Clark expects the two will alternate duties on kickoffs and extra points rather than one designated as the starter. McNamara agreed, saying they’re friends on the same team.
“If we were on different teams, it’d be competitive,” McNamara said.
Raising the bar
In a real sense, the girls are competing with boys and feel added, unfair pressure of proving they are better than male kickers. They aren’t the biggest players on their teams but have strong kicking legs – plural for McNamara, who goes right-footed on kickoffs for greater distance and left-footed on extra points for greater accuracy.
“They think a girl can’t play football like a boy can, so they treat me differently,” said McNamara, 5-foot-6 and 115 pounds.
“When I first started playing in sixth grade, the boys were like, ‘Why are you here? You don’t need to be here’ and stuff like that,” said Torres-Espino, who is 4-11 and 104 pounds.
Boys are quicker to judge than girls are, she said, “But once you get to know them more, and once you get comfortable as a team, they’ll be more supportive. When I make my extra points, they’re really supportive about it.”
Now teammates give her high-fives, tell her “good job” and tap her on the helmet, just like they do for boys.
That’s her teammates.
“Some of the other teams are pretty rude,” she continued, noting some opponents will try to run into her after kicks or make unflattering comments.
Her response: Make the kick and “look at them in a rude way.”
McNamara said she helps handle any negativity with positive reinforcement from people such as Patrick Means, her coach at One on One Kicking in Richmond Hill. She said she’s the only middle-school female student at the specialized training sessions.
Her mother, Jenny McNamara, told her daughter to use boys’ trash talk as motivation.
“I think it’s great to put yourself in an uncomfortable situation and have to figure out a way to make it work,” said her mother, who competed in college athletics in diving and gymnastics. “As I told her, that’s life. This is a good, little life skill.”
All three girls are very athletic, playing multiple sports throughout the year with seasons overlapping between school and club teams. Time management is another key life skill.
“Liv is one who likes to do everything. There’s just not enough time in the day,” Jenny McNamara said. “She’s constantly in motion. I think sports has always been her thing.”
Jodi Clark said her daughter Charlotte (5-4, 115 pounds) is “all about sports.” She already played club soccer and school volleyball in the fall but went out for football with extra support from her older brother, Will, a student at Benedictine.
“I think it’s a confidence builder,” Jodi Clark said. “I think being able to get out there and actually do well in a sport that they would have never typically done is huge. … She’s going to give you 100 percent and then some.”
Higher value on PATs
All three have put up solid numbers this season on extra-point attempts, which count as two points rather than one in middle school football because of the higher degree of difficulty. Run and pass conversions, conversely, count as one point.
“When you have somebody who can hit the two-pointers, that’s a huge difference,” Brennan said.
Tony Uhrich, second-year coach of the Blessed Sacrament junior varsity, said the unreliability of the PAT – requiring good snap, hold and kick – has teams choosing to run or pass for less reward.
“When (Charlotte) showed up, it kind of changed our strategy, which was good,” Uhrich said. “To be able to kick for two -- sometimes those two points are the difference in the game.”
Field goals are rarely attempted at this level, the coaches said, and at the time they were interviewed this season, none of the three girls had tried a three-pointer in their careers. They estimate their ranges in practice at up to 40 yards.
Uhrich recalled when Clark tried out for the team in August, about two weeks before the scheduled start of this season. They were at Daffin Park, with no goal posts, and Clark was off to one side, kicking maybe 10 times with what must have felt like all eyes on her.
“That first day, I’m sure she was crazy nervous,” Uhrich said. “What an uncomfortable situation.”
The very first boot didn’t go very far.
“She was like, ‘I’m sorry. That wasn’t good,’ ” Uhrich said. “I said, ‘If that wasn’t good, I can’t wait to see what’s good for you.’ ”
The situation has gotten very comfortable, the coach said, and “not a big deal at all” for the boys to have a girl teammate.
“She’s been amazing. From kicking in her front yard with her brother to coming out to one of our practices, being super nervous, to kicking the ball through with confidence now.”
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