A high school in Washington, D.C., is set to name a former women's professional football player as its head varsity football coach Friday, a move that a national women's sports advocacy group calls historic.
Natalie Randolph, 29, a science teacher at Coolidge High School, will be introduced as the school's head football coach at a news conference there Friday morning, according to her attorney, Lawrence Wilson.
Randolph, who was a wide receiver for the D.C. Divas women's pro football team and a standout sprinter and hurdler at the University of Virginia, has previous experience coaching boys, having been an assistant football coach for Washington's H.D. Woodson High School in 2006 and 2007.
But now she's stepping into the head coaching role, extremely rare for women in high school football.
"I think everybody is pretty excited about it, not just because she's making history, frankly, but I think they're just excited about having Natalie Randolph," said Wilson, who said he's spoken to players and administrators at the school while preparing for Friday's announcement.
"As an ex-high school football player myself, I would expect some type of hesitancy about having a female coach. But I haven't seen it," he said. "She comes from that credibility [of having played with the Divas] and winning a championship with them in 2006, and I think they're thrilled with having someone with that playing experience."
It's not clear how many women have been head boys' high school football coaches.
In a story about Randolph's hiring Thursday, The Washington Post reported that another Washington teacher, Wanda Oates, was named head football coach at a different D.C. high school in 1985. But she was removed a day later after coaches who didn't want to coach against her pressured the school district, the Post reported.
Clell Wade Coaches Directory Inc., a company that keeps a database of interscholastic coaches, doesn't keep track of gender, owner Karen Wade-Hutton said.
But Wade-Hutton, whose family has been keeping track of interscholastic sports through the company for 50 years, said that although she's heard of women who were assistant football coaches at high schools, she's "never heard of a female head coach at a high school football team."
The New York-based Women's Sports Foundation "congratulates Natalie Randolph on her historic mark," the group's CEO, Karen Durkin, said in an e-mailed statement Thursday.
"Girls and women -- along with their fathers, sons and brothers -- now have clear evidence that the gridiron ceiling can be broken. Natalie's hiring will serve as a much-needed catalyst for women in leadership positions across all sports," Durkin said.
Randolph wouldn't speak to reporters until Friday's announcement, Wilson said. But in a statement e-mailed by Wilson, Randolph said she was "excited for the opportunity to coach these young men, and I'm flattered at the outpouring of support and encouragement from the D.C. football and academic community."
"I know how important high school football is to these young men, the parents, the school, and the Coolidge community. I plan on taking this opportunity and running with it," she said.
Phone calls seeking comment from Coolidge's athletic director, Toby Strong, and principal, Thelma Jarrett, were not returned Thursday.
Rich Daniel, the Divas' general manager, said Randolph will win over anyone skeptical about her ability to coach in an almost exclusively male sport. He referenced her assistant position at Woodson, where she worked with wide receivers.
"I know their passing game was one of the best in the league," Daniel said. "She went through some of the same things she'll go through now: Do you know how to coach? Can you play? But you can ask that of males, too. That's not unique to her being a female.
"People will have that initial reaction, but they'll realize she ... really knows what she's talking about."
Wilson, who knew Randolph at Virginia, where he also was a track and field athlete, said she is a "soft-spoken teacher -- and I'm sure a coach -- with a swift sword."
"She has a quiet demeanor about her but has no problem getting respect from people," he said.