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Celebrating Title IX: Kickin it with the boys

Tatum Coe hopped onto Eagle Valley's football team in 2022

Tatum Coe played football for Eagle Valley last fall.
Tracy Coe/Courtesy photo
Celebrating Title IX

Editor’s Note: This is the second installment of a series celebrating 50 years of Title IX and its impact on women’s sports.

You know the scene: a Peyton Manning jersey hangs off the 10-year-old boy barking orders to pals at recess, changing plays at the line.

No matter where any boy ends up in life, there’s a good chance at one point he felt destined to run onto an NFL field. It’s an unlikely dream, but at least a pathway exists.



For boys.

The NFL is still waiting for its Kathrine Switzer, but the Vail Valley already saw its trailblazing heroine step up last fall. When Eagle Valley soccer star Tatum Coe kicked off for the Devils on August 28 against Thomas Jefferson, the ‘boom’ was all about special teams savvy and good hang time. Its legacy, however, will probably have more to do with that football game at recess and the girl curiously waiting and wondering when it will be her turn to call a play.

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Jokes and jocks

During her sophomore year, Coe was hanging out with her friends, Eagle Valley quarterback Will Geiman and a few of the wide receivers, when they suggested the varsity soccer player kick for the team. At first, she thought it was kind of a joke.

“They kept telling me, ‘like no seriously, we actually do need a kicker, you should do it,'” she remembered.

She hadn’t ever kicked a football — and wouldn’t until a tryout more than a year later. 

“It’s not that different from kicking a soccer ball, so I figured I’d be alright at it.”

Her dad, whom she grew up watching college football and playing catch with, was on board. Mom … not so much.

“My mom always said, ‘there’s no way you’re doing that,’” Coe laughed. 

“My dad and I would always say, ‘mom, they really need a kicker, I really want to kick.’ Finally she let me do it.”

Even though football was “always in the background” growing up, Coe said when she was young, she “kind of realized it’s not a thing that would happen (in her future).” Coe was watching, though, when Sarah Fuller became the first woman to score a point in a Power 5 football game, kicking a field goal for Vanderbilt in the fall of 2020.

“So that was kind of cool to do something like she was doing, albeit on a much smaller scale,” Coe reflected. 

John Davis took over Devils football for the 2021-2022 season. Before summer started, he arranged an audition for Coe, who sprayed kicks all over the field.

“We figured out I’m actually decent and that this could be a thing that actually happens,” she recalled.

Last fall, the captain of the soccer team was busy with club team duties on Mondays and Wednesdays, which left Tuesdays and Thursdays — and of course Fridays — open for football. At practice, Coe ran sprints, practiced kicks and even occasionally hopped in linebacker drills.

“I got to feel some contact in some of those drills which was definitely a lot of fun,” she said.

“At first I felt really out of place and uncomfortable, but then everyone would go out of there way, like, ‘Hey Tatum, come drink water with us, you can come sit and talk with us,’ and coach would make sure that I felt included.”

Tatum Coe was a star soccer player for Eagle Valley in the spring and is headed to Florida State in the fall.
Tracy Coe/Courtesy photo

Her statline probably won’t grab the attention of Mike Norvell’s Florida State staff, where Coe intends to study International Affairs in the fall while playing club soccer and intramural flag football (she did check the roster but doesn’t have a tryout planned — yet, anyway — for the traditional college football power). Her two field goal attempts were blocked; though she estimates her range is around 40-45 yards. She also converted two on-side kicks against Niwot and two more against Steamboat Springs.

In the last game, she played free safety for three downs against Palisade. 

“It was actually kind of terrifying,” Coe recollected, immediately pivoting to the positive elements of the moment.

“It was really cool because he was putting all the seniors in and I was sitting on the sidelines and all the boys were like, ‘you forgot one.’”

The leader of the soccer sorority in Gypsum, Coe loved every minute as an adopted member of the football fraternity.

“It’s so different. I can’t even put into words how cool it was to be on a team full of guys,” she said.

“I was friends with all of them before, but going through all the awesome victories, the double-overtime games, one-point losses, the sprints, the drills — it’s just unreal how close you get with everyone.”

The kicker didn’t feel the boys held back much of their standard jock talk.

“I don’t think they were making a conscious effort to filter anything, which was funny to listen to and hear and I just shake my head and laugh because it cracked me up,” she said.

Of course, Coe brought something to the camaraderie, too.

“They called me an ‘honorary boy’ — like I’m one of the boys. I’d sit in the back of the bus with all the senior boys, I got all of them to do crossword puzzles with me,” she said.

“We talked, it was one of the coolest things I’ve ever experienced.” 

First downs to Title IX

Coe’s first moment came against the defending 4A state champions Thomas Jefferson in Eagle Valley’s opener.

“I was absolutely terrified,” she stated.

“These guys are huge, like I’ve never seen a man this tall in my entire life and I’m supposed to go out there and kick it. I got my number and go out there and I’m like kind of freaking out internally.”

She told herself to relax and breathe and after the first kick, things calmed down. “It wasn’t stressful for me at that point. It was more fun and just, ‘Wow, I’m really lucky to be out here and able to do this kind of stuff.’”

The Devils pulled out a double-overtime 38-30 victory en route to a 3-6 record. Coe never recorded a tackle, though even that was the subject of a running inside joke.

“There were so many wagers placed on this and I tried so hard,” she said.

The 2022 graduate may have failed to tackle a player, but she certainly made headway in leveling barriers and stereotypes. As Title IX turns 50, her play was perhaps the most poignant recent milestone in a long local lineage of forerunning female athletes.

“I’m so extremely lucky to live in a place where I could do something like be the only girl on a football team and to live in a time where that’s allowed and I can basically play any sport I want to play regardless of the fact that I’m a girl,” Coe said.

“I find it insane that that was life for so many people way back in the day.”

Coe added that she was grateful for “being accepted on a team and was able to make a difference.”

“I just think it’s important that if someone can bring something to the table, that they should be allowed to do that. If they have a skill that somebody needs, regardless if they’re a girl or boy, I think they should be allowed to show people that they can be of help to a team.”

Coe sees the contrast between boys in the opening scene, aspiring to an imaginary future running into Mile High, where playing for praise and pats on the back blurs the original — idealistic — intrinsic motivations for picking up the pigskin, and today’s female athletes. In her mind, the positive consequence for unequal visibility received in the public square for women’s sports is improved clarity in regards to sport’s transcendent values.

“I know a lot of the sports I play don’t get attention from fans — until this year we never had people come to our soccer games — so, it was never really about putting on a show for a crowd but more about developing yourself as a human being and developing relationships with the girls you’re playing with, which I think is a really special thing,” she said.

Relationships, confidence and proudly enjoying the fruits of hard work, were huge takeaways from her prep career.

“It’s also taught me a lot about adversity and that it’s not about the circumstances but your reaction to the circumstances,” Coe added.

“You control the way your life goes. It’s not about the cards you’re dealt, it’s about what you do with them.” 


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