Rebecca Longo (born March 17, 1999) is an American
football
Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...
kicker
Kicker or The Kicker may refer to:
Sports
* Placekicker, a position in American and Canadian football
* ''Kicker'' (magazine), sports magazine in Germany
* Kicker, the German colloquial term for an association football player
* Kicker, the wor ...
who became the first woman to earn a college
football scholarship
An athletic scholarship is a form of scholarship to attend a college or university or a private high school awarded to an individual based predominantly on their ability to play in a sport. Athletic scholarships are common in the United States and ...
to an
NCAA
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates College athletics in the United States, student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, and Simon Fraser University, 1 in Canada. ...
school at the
Division II level or higher when she signed a letter of intent with
Adams State University
Adams State University is a public university in Alamosa, Colorado, United States. The university's Adams State Grizzlies athletic teams compete in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference.
History
Adams State was founded in 1921 as a normal scho ...
. She attended
Basha High School in
Chandler, Arizona
Chandler is a city in Maricopa County, Arizona, United States, and a suburb in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area, Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler Metropolitan Statistical Area. It is the List of municipalities in Arizona, fourth-most populous city in Arizona ...
and started playing football competitively her sophomore year. In 2014, she was a junior varsity kicker at Queen Creek High in Arizona, but after transferring to Basha High she was forced to sit out her junior year.
In her final year of high school, she converted 35 extra points on 38 attempts and was successful on her lone field goal attempt of the season of 30 yards. She did not handle kickoff duties. She was listed as 5 foot 11 inches tall and 140 pounds.
After a redshirt year, and an ankle injury during the 2018 season, Longo left
Adams State without attempting a kick or playing a down in a game. She announced via her
social media
Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the Content creation, creation, information exchange, sharing and news aggregator, aggregation of Content (media), content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongs ...
that she wished to "pursue other opportunities", presumably at other universities.
In September 2019, Longo announced that she had joined the Gila River Hawks of the newly formed Hohokam Junior College Athletic Conference. The conference disbanded after one season. The conference, consisting of only four teams of random students from a junior college in the area, may have been created solely to help Longo fulfill her stated claim of playing in a "college football" game.
See also
*
List of female American football players
Women's gridiron football (including American football and Canadian football) is a form of the sport played by women. Most leagues in the United States, such as the Women's Football Alliance, play by rules similar to men's tackle football. Alth ...
References
External links
Adams State bio
{{DEFAULTSORT:Longo, Becca
1999 births
Living people
American football placekickers
Adams State Grizzlies football players
Female players of American football
Players of American football from Chandler, Arizona