Haley Van Voorhis makes history as 1st woman to play safety in NCAA football game
A small Division III school in Winchester, Virginia, is making big headlines for having a female football player.
On Saturday, Virginia-native Haley Van Voorhis became the first female non-kicker to appear in an NCAA football game when she took the field for Shenandoah University in the first quarter against Juniata College.
Van Voorhis got in on the action in third quarter with under a minute to go when she came on for a third and long and forced a quarterback hurry.
"It's an amazing thing -- I just wanted to get out and do my thing," Van Voorhis said after the game, The Washington Post first reported. "I want to show other people this is what women can do, to show what I can do. It's a big moment. I made the impossible possible, and I'm excited about that."
The 5-foot-6, 145-pound junior has spent the past two seasons playing on junior varsity and also competes on the school's track and field team as a sprinter.
Van Voorhis missed out on her senior season of high school football at Christchurch, which was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but was a 2019 all-state honorable mention.
Before Saturday, Shelby Osborne became the first female non-kicker to play for an NAIA program in 2014 as a defensive back for Campbellsville University and appeared in one game in 2018, according to ESPN.
However, many other women have played kicking positions in college football.
Katie Hnida was the first woman to score in an NCAA Division I-A football game as the place-kicker at New Mexico, ESPN reported. Sarah Fuller became the first woman to score in a Power 5 football game as the kicker for Vanderbilt seven years later.
Van Voorhis told ESPN in a 2021 interview that she's used to the attention from fans and competitors going back to her time in Pop Warner and high school.
"There's definitely people out there who see the story and think, 'This girl's going to get hurt,'" she told ESPN at the time. "I hear that a lot. Or, 'She's too small, doesn't weigh enough, not tall enough.' But I'm not the shortest on my team, and I'm not the lightest."
Her college coach, Scott Yoder, told ESPN at the time that she is a "very determined" person, noting that "when you peel everything back it's about a young person who wants an opportunity, who works for it and has earned an opportunity."
"For 21 years I've been fortunate to be on the coaching side of that. And at the core of this, it's no different," Yoder said.
