Nitro Brings Full-Contact Women's Football to Region

Newtown resident Lynn Kovack is mother, grandmother and football player?

Kovack is beginning her rookie year with the Northeastern Nitro, a Women’s Football Alliance team making its debut in 2011. The alliance is a full-contact American football league comprised of more than 60 teams from across the United States.

The Nitro roster includes women from all over Connecticut, including two from Newtown, three from Danbury, three from Brookfield and two from Woodbury, as well as a few who make the weekly trek in from Rhode Island, New York and New Jersey. The team’s players range in age from 18 to 56.

The Nitro’s preseason schedule leaves no room for anyone who is not fully dedicated.

“We started with 70 girls and we’re down to about 38,” Carley Pesente, one of the team’s owners and players and a 14-year veteran of women’s football said.

The petite, 115-pound Kovack, who works as an administrative assistant at the Newtown Building Department, was formerly active in volleyball and softball. She suffered a wrist injury that left her unable to play.

While recuperating, Kovack saw a notice about tryouts for the team, and so once healed, she went for it.

“It’s a challenge,” said Kovack.

She has the enthusiastic support of her family. They are having shirts printed with her number and have already purchased season tickets to the four Nitro home games, the first of which will be played at Danbury’s Immaculate High School field on April 2.

The team gets together for an hour every Saturday evening at The Spot in Bethel for a players and coaches meeting, where they split into the two groups of offensive and defensive players.

The groups alternate between “chalk talk” where coaches run through plays on a whiteboard, and a practice review where sprawled on sofas under a neon Coors Light sign, players watch a video of the previous week’s practice sessions.

Then it is off to the Newtown Youth Academy for two more hours of drills and scrimmaging.  The players finish at 9:30 p.m. and then, Sunday at 5 a.m. they’re back at the NYA to do it all again for another hour and 45 minutes.

Wednesday night the players have yet another structured hour plus off-season conditioning in addition to the physical training many of the players do regularly on their own.

There is a financial commitment as well. Players are not paid to play and are responsible for supplying their own pads and equipment. Those commuting weekly from outside the area must cover travel expenses and lodging.

And then there’s the pain. Even before the players step foot onto the practice field, they are advised to wear their helmets around the house to acclimate to the pressure. The helmet has an inner liner inflated with air to protect against concussion, but causes painful headaches until the player’s body adjusts.

At Saturday night’s practice, the team’s medical director and physical therapist Lee Day tended to a steady flow of players needing treatments ranging from wrist taping to loosening of tight muscles.

So what’s the payoff? For one, the players have a team of enthusiastic and supportive coaches who are exacting in their criticism but effusive with their praise.

During “chalk-talk,” Coach Sheldon Francis critiqued the defense.

“There was a lot of tough talk until we put the equipment on,” said Francis. “The last four practices (when the players started wearing the full uniform) you’ve been playing patty-cake.”

Yet Sheldon was mostly positive when talking about his experiences of coaching women compared to men.

“I’m not dealing with egos,” said Francis about the women players. “They just want to make the play.”

When polled, the players themselves see football as a positive outlet for their aggression.

One said, “You can be a freak within the lines.”

Natasha Amsden, 20, of Tolland, is in her fifth season of women’s football.

“It’s a legal way to be violent,” she said.