PARKER, Colo. — It’s one of the most thankless jobs in football, being a kicker. It's a position that often gets overlooked until you look over and see the kicker’s a girl.
“They're definitely amazed," Ponderosa kicker, Riley Fitzgibbon said. "It's definitely like, what do you play? And I'm like, kicker, and I don't know why their mind goes to flag football like, Oh, you're on the girls' team, right? But nope, I'm on the boys' tackle football team. “
Ponderosa’s Riley Fitzgibbon is a former soccer goalie who could've went on to play collegiately until one day she realized something was missing.
“I had just such a loss of passion that I was never going to make it there," Fitzgibbon expressed. "So I was praying and praying to God for an answer, something to bring back my passion. And then one Christmas, I asked for a football.”
That's where the Pondo Mustangs fit in, host of the national Kohl's kicking camp this summer.
“We're really fortunate to have coaches dedicated to special teams," Ponderosa head football coach Jaron Cohen said. "They do stuff in the summer, we opened up to athletes from other schools, and one day Riley showed up.”
Riley would go on to earn a spot on the varsity team, making her football debut in the season opener against Fort Collins.
“Just because she's a girl doesn't mean she got to kick, she earned it," Cohen said. "?And the first one she had a little nerves and her steps were a little messed up, but she drilled two of them pretty good and we're really really glad to have her as part of our program.”
But for Riley, football isn’t just a thing to do, it’s an escape from unimaginable tragedy.
“In 2020 my sister ended up passing away," Fitzgibbon said. "Which was like super, super huge in my mental health. It just went down. And so when I started kind of thinking about football, it was just kind of like, Should I do this? My sister always knew me as this amazing soccer athlete. And then in 2022 and December, my mom ended up passing away too.”
That's when Fitzgibbon decided to blaze her own trail. “Kind of just finding my own path and finding how I can get out of the hardships in life," she said. "And just like doing my own thing, not caring about others opinions, and my mom was definitely my big cheerleader for that.”
Now, Riley will go down in history as the first-ever girl to play for Ponderosa’s varsity football team, a feat she wishes her mom could witness.
"She was super huge with football and just loved it," Riley said. "And she was super proud of me when I was playing at Luther and I know she would be super excited to like see me playing on the varsity football team."
With a personal best of 48 yards, the fact that she’s so good, so soon is the real kicker.
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