WOMEN

Making the Cut

Katie Hnida made the team at Colorado, but when Duke cut Heather Mercer, it set the stage for a landmark discrimination case

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by Teri Bostian

In mid-July the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, ruled that one-time placekicker hopeful Heather Sue Mercer could legally pursue her discrimination case against Duke University and its football coach Fred Goldsmith. Mercer graduated in 1998, thus ending her gridiron dreams, but she hopes now to win her suit and use any monies awarded her to establish a scholarship fund at Duke for female placekickers.

"The best of these girls deserve the opportunity to play at the next level," Mercer said in a written statement. "Duke denied me that opportunity. My chance is over, but theirs is not."

On the other side of the country, Katie Hnida (pronounced Ny-duh) is a freshman walk-on at the University of Colorado. She has made the Buffaloes squad as a reserve placekicker.

Some might say history is bound to repeat itself, but just five years after Heather Mercer tried to walk on and was turned away from an all-male college football team, Katie Hnida has walked on and stayed.

Katie's Forerunners

During her senior season at Chatfield High (Colorado), Hnida told reporters her goal was to become the nation's first woman college football player. She's missed her chance - at least two women have already played at the college level. (There may be more, but the NCAA, surprisingly, keeps no tally of the number of women playing on men's intercollegiate teams.)

First, Heather Mercer played for Duke; she was listed on the official roster and her picture graced the football yearbook. She booted the winning field goal during the spring scrimmage in 1995, then she got the boot prior to the fall season.

In 1997, Liz Heaston made two of four PAT attempts her junior year at Willamette University (Salem, Oregon), kicking two extra points in the Bearcats' homecoming game. According to WU's sports information director Cliff Voliva, the team's kicker was injured in their season's first weeks, and Willamette's head football coach first looked to the men's soccer team for a quick fix - only the two men he tried couldn't cut it. Voliva himself suggested Heaston, an All-American then on the women's soccer team.

Heaston happened to be in a class the coach taught, and he liked her and invited her to give it a shot. Though her soccer schedule eventually conflicted with the football team's dates, Heaston was able to make respectable kicks in two games that season. After her two-game debut, the once-injured kicker took his job back and Heaston returned to the soccer field.

"Some people thought we were just doing it for the publicity," says Voliva. Not so, he claims: More than publicity they needed Heaston's expertise, and she came through. The '97 Bearcats were anything but a weak team in need of a PR stunt: they went on to win the NAIA championship. (In 1998, the school moved to the NCAA, Division III.) Heaston, whom Voliva describes as "driven," graduated last May and has since enrolled in optometry school.

Mercer's experience was not so glorious. As an all-state high school kicker from Yorktown Heights, NY, Mercer had helped her prep squad win the state championship in 1993. She then tried to walk on at Duke in the fall of 1994. Mercer was turned away for two seasons, but when she kicked the game-winning 28-yarder in the annual Blue-White intrasquad scrimmage in 1995, Coach Goldsmith told her she'd earned a place on the team. The next fall, he reneged, telling Mercer that she should be "entering beauty pageants" instead of trying to play football.

Next page: Can Heather kick?

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