NC girl convinced mom to let her play varsity football. Now she starts — and tackles the boys
Something rare happened Friday night in North Carolina: A 16-year-old girl from Chapel Hill High School started a varsity high school football game.
It’s not unusual anymore to hear about girls playing, but more often than not, they’re kicking field goals and extra points.
Not this time.
Playing free safety, Brooklyn Harker got in on two tackles in Chapel Hill’s 55-6 win over Carrboro.
“I feel like I’m just like any other player on the team,” Harker, 16, said Sunday night, after finishing her job in ticket sales with the Durham Bulls minor league baseball team. “It feels normal and, of course, there are nerves, like with everything, but it’s very exciting and I’m glad I get the opportunity to play.”
Harker has played tackle football since she was in third grade, and her mother, Jennifer Harker, wanted this love affair to end by the time she reached high school.
“They’re like grown men at this stage,” said Jennifer Harker, who recently got her doctorate in mass communications from UNC-Chapel Hill. “They’re very strong, very big, and it worries me as her mother. That’s my job as her mom — to worry.”
As Brooklyn was growing up playing tackle ball, she and her mom made a deal — she could play up until junior varsity as a ninth-grader, and that would be it.
Brooklyn played JV at University High School in Morgantown, West Virginia, but had to stop after a few weeks; the girls soccer season overlapped, and she decided she didn’t want to miss it.
But when the family decided to move back to North Carolina earlier this year, the football bug came back hard, and mom relented.
“She had been bugging me and bugging me,” Jennifer Harker said, “and she said she wants to get back to it so bad. She’s like, ‘Mom, they won’t even play me, and it’s a great way to stay fit for soccer season.’ ”
‘We have a football player who happens to be a girl’
Chapel Hill coach Isaac Marsh walked into his office this summer, near the start of his 24th season, and one of his assistant coaches stopped him before an early morning practice.
“Hey, coach,” the assistant said. “We’ve got a new player.”
Marsh, thinking nothing of it, shook his head and said “OK,” as he looked down at his practice plan.
In Orange County, an additional player can be welcome news as high schools around Chapel Hill have struggled for years to field varsity football teams due to low participation. Nearby Cedar Ridge isn’t fielding a varsity team this season for the second time in four years, East Chapel Hill skipped the 2021 spring season, and Marsh’s Chapel Hill High did not play varsity in 2018.
“Hey, coach,” the assistant shot back. “It’s a female.”
Marsh said the first thing he thought of was protocols: Where will she dress out, how do we handle meetings, bus rides? He met with his principal and athletic administrators.
In the end, Marsh said it wasn’t that hard to pull it together.
“She dresses out in the female locker room,” he said. “And once you step out on that field, it’s time to play football and learn. That was the thing I noticed about Brooklyn — that she knows the game and no doubt about it, she’s been around it. She did a lot of fundamental things correctly. I watch her every day and see the little things. I’m like, ‘Man, Brook isn’t missing too many catches at wide receiver.’ ”
Marsh said he plays Brooklyn at kicker, receiver, defensive back and on the “hands team” when he knows the opponent will try an onside kick to gain an extra possession. Marsh trusts that Brooklyn is one of the best players on his team at catching the kick and not losing it.
In a close game, that could be the difference between winning and losing.
“She’s a competitor,” Marsh said. “A lot of times, when girls play, they’re usually in the role of kicker. In this case, Brooklyn is a football player. The fellas on the team have accepted her from Day 1. It’s not like, ‘Oh, we have a girl playing.’ No, we have a football player who happens to be a girl.”
Not treating girls differently
In Charlotte on Friday, Providence Day had a female as its kicker and punter.
A year ago, Sydney McCorkle broke the gender barrier for girls playing N.C. private school football. Like Harker in Chapel Hill, McCorkle started in last week’s 53-0 win over the Carolina Bearcats.
McCorkle made a 32-yard field goal, stepping in for injured all-state kicker Jake Porter. She also had a long punt.
Providence Day coach Chad Grier played quarterback at East Carolina. His son, Will, is an NFL quarterback with the Cowboys. Grier said he’s seen a lot in football, and McCorkle was the first girl he’d ever coached.
But Grier said he had never heard of a girl, like Brooklyn Harker, playing an on-field position, much less starting.
“I’m sure it’s happened somewhere, but, man, that’s pretty exceptional,” Grier said. “It’s just a hugely positive thing. We don’t live in the same world we lived in 20 years ago or 50 years ago. We talk about inclusion in every walk of life. If she’s good enough to play, play. Good for her.”
Still, Grier said he does worry about safety. He said in a game against Carver High, players made a point to try to hit McCorkle after kickoffs.
“I’ve never treated her differently, and she’s never asked for it,” Grier said. “But they came after her, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel differently because it was Sydney. I went to the refs, saying, ‘That’s not cool.’ But I have to be careful to not create a double standard. Teams go after kickers all the time. She didn’t ask for anything different.”
‘Whoa, I was not expecting that.’
Watching her daughter play, Jennifer Harker, a journalist, has to let her husband, David, handle the camera. She’s too nervous.
“I’m just a mess whenever she’s out there playing,” Harker said. “It’s exciting and fun because I know she loves it so much, but it’s extremely nerve-racking. I sit there and shake while my husband takes videos.”
Brooklyn is a tad over 5-foot-7 and 153 pounds. She lifts weights with her teammates and does everything else they do. Marsh, her coach, said he decides on how much she plays depending on the teams Chapel Hill is facing. He makes an effort to not put her into situations where she might be physically overmatched.
When Chapel Hill’s starting safety got injured, Marsh looked at film of Carrboro and felt that was a good opportunity to get Brooklyn into the game.
“Her number got called and she was ready,” Marsh said. “She stepped in and played.”
Brooklyn said, like usual, she got a few stares when she came onto the field.
“They don’t usually say anything,” she said of her team’s opponents. “It’s just usually looks. I got hit in the game the other day, and the guy who hit me was like, ‘Are you OK?’ ”
Brooklyn said no matter how much she gets to play moving forward, she’s “super thankful” for the chance to play on this team.
She talked about how players like running back Elijah Ayankoya and quarterback Caleb Kelley have befriended her and helped teach her more about the game. She talked about the big hit she made in a scrimmage against Raleigh’s Ravenscroft School and how she looked toward the sidelines and saw all of her teammates jumping up and down and pumping their fists.
She also knows that her mom, and lots of other people, worry about her safety.
She doesn’t.
“I worry more about the team as a whole and what’s going on out there on the field more than what people are thinking about off the field,” Brooklyn said. “If I get knocked down, I get right back up.”
Do the hits hurt?
“No,” she said. “Actually, it’s more of a ‘Whoa, I was not expecting that.’ ”
The Brooklyn Harker File
▪ Age: 16 (birthday March 12)
▪ Favorite Class: Chemistry
▪ Favorite Athlete: Tobin Heath, U.S. Women’s pro soccer star
▪ Favorite Celebrity: Actor “Ryan Reynolds, for sure. I just love his vibe. His movies are cool.”
▪ Where her love of football comes from: “I would say it comes from the competitive side of me and the aggression of the sport, and spending time with my dad (David) and my brother (Jordan) throwing with me outside. My brother always motivated me to work hard and do my best.”
This story was originally published September 16, 2021 at 6:30 AM.
