On Monday, fewer than 48 hrs right after foremost the Mile Higher Blaze to a countrywide title, Kimberly Santistevan was back to do the job. To start with there was an early-morning summer camp as a football mentor at Douglas County High Faculty, then off to her task as a pre-K trainer.
It was there, doing work with 4-calendar year-olds, that the magnitude of quarterbacking the Blaze to the greatest feat in Colorado women’s tackle football history commenced to sink in.
“I’m nonetheless just about in disbelief it essentially occurred,” Santistevan mentioned Monday. “But then I was enjoying capture with a bunch of the minimal girls. They had been so thrilled about catching the football from me… and I was like , ‘Huh, I imagine which is variety of what my even bigger motive was.
“I did what I did for the reason that I want all those girls to be fired up to perform athletics as properly. That’s the initial time it established in what I had just achieved.”
Santistevan threw three landing passes in the Blaze’s 21-20 victory more than the Derby City Dynamite in the Women’s Soccer Alliance Division II national championship this earlier Saturday in Canton, Ohio. The victory built the Blaze the state’s very first women’s tackle crew to get a nationwide title.
Two of Santistevan’s landing passes moreover a pivotal two-point conversion went to wideout Easy Lowery-Jones, a former DU basketball standout who is now a security analyst.
And the activity-successful landing was hauled in by wideout Stephanie Skinner, an MMA fighter and Starbucks barista who epitomizes the coronary heart and perseverance of a semi-professional football workforce featuring players of all kinds of backgrounds and professions. Players selection from teenagers to all those in their mid-50s, who each pay out $400 in yearly dues when also footing the monthly bill for their possess vacation.
“Being in Canton and enjoying on the (Tom Benson) Corridor of Fame Industry, it was an amazing ambiance, and we love how Canton is supporting women’s football, so that’s a commence for us to get far more publicity nationally,” Lowery-Jones explained. “Hopefully, all the NFL teams commence supporting their neighborhood women’s soccer teams, like the Patriots do (with the Professional division winner Boston Renegades).”
Although the Blaze’s gain mandates they transfer up to the WFA’s Professional division future 12 months — in which the competitors is going to be substantially stiffer — Mile High’s longtime proprietor Wyn Flato-Dominy is stepping back again from the club. Flato-Dominy has served as the WFA’s director of operations for the past 3 several years and is now having on that purpose total-time with a aim on “the expansion and betterment of women’s football in common.”
“I’m not strolling away from the Blaze solely — that’s my baby and I built it — but I did formally retire from the staff and handed it about to (head coach and new owner) Rob Sandlin on Saturday evening,” Flato-Dominy stated. “The staff introduced me the game ball in the conclude zone right after the game, and I let the ladies know it was official, and everybody was crying.”
Flato-Dominy operates Workforce United, an global team consisting of WFA stars. She’ll now switch her awareness to prepping that team — which will characteristic a handful of Blaze players, which includes 17-yr-outdated linebacker Leilani Caamal and 40-yr-aged veteran defensive lineman Yolanda Searcy — for three game titles towards championship Mexican groups in mid-September in Mexico City.
More Stories
UK fitness industry fights for continuation of government energy support from April 2023
Iran’s Amir Aliakbari ready for a fight years in the making at ONE 164: Pacio vs. Brooks
5 Potential Outfield Trade Targets For The Mariners