About five years ago, I caught wind of a professional football league called the Lingerie Football League (now called the Legends Football League). Being a former track athlete turned beauty pageant winner, I was looking for another competition rush and was instantly interested. So I began training. I made the squad for the San Diego Seduction and was beyond happy. Unfortunately, life intervened — I was forced to get a “real job” — and I was unable to suit up when the season began.
That’s where my LFL career ended.
During my time with the team, I met a teammate, Danielle Harvey. She has been playing with the LFL ever since – and is going on her seventh season of playing for Los Angeles Temptation. Danielle plays hard, and has the injuries to prove it. Over her career, she has torn the ACL and meniscus in her left leg and has fractured her patella.
While the women in the LFL wear hardly any clothing, they play for the love of the sport. Many of the players are former college or professional athletes, and contrary to popular belief, they don’t get paid for playing in the league.
“I don’t like the fact we don’t get paid,” says Harvey. “It’s hard to produce a product when we have to work [a regular job] 40 hours out of the week.”
The lack of any payment is a massive negative for the league, obviously. At one point, the LFL did pay athletes based on ticket sales, but that practice has fallen by the wayside. Under the current structure, the ladies actually have to pay a fee to participate in the league. The league continues to expect its athletes to be in amazing shape, while they have to pay for the privilege. The one expense the league covers is athlete travel for the rare away games during the season. And let’s be honest: in order to be ready to take hits and look good doing it, spending an hour on the bike at your local gym is not going to cut it.
Danielle Harvey has always been a fan of the sport. “
I always wanted to play football,” she says. “They said I was too small to play with the guys. When I found out about this league, it had everything I wanted.”
The Legends Football League originally started as a halftime show, where models would attempt to play this notoriously savage sport. Today, if you can’t hit or can’t take a hit, the LFL has no need for you. The league offers a chance for women who love the sport to play at a higher level, beyond pick-up games that happen across the country. You get to meet women from all walks of life and form bonds that may never have happened otherwise.
“We have a platform to play in front of fans who come out to support what we are doing,” Harvey says.
Every year there are tryouts, and even former LFL players have to participate in order to make the team for the upcoming year. Tryout protocol and practice vary from team to team, but for L.A. Temptation, the process begins with an initial weekend tryout. If you make that first cut, then there are three to four weekends for workouts in front of the coaches to assess your skill level before you make the final cut.
Harvey has been on the team for six years, and every year she gets ready for tryouts as if it is the first time.
“The main thing I work on is my cardio,” she says. “We don’t have pads. They also want to see who can actually block, so I work on my upper body. I make sure I have two months of cardio, four to five days a week. Training consists of the sauna workout, agility ladder, a lot of squats to help keep the legs strong. Explosion is the key. A lot of calisthenics.”
After making the team, the grueling training process is not over.
“Once we get into the season,” Harvey says, “it’s just maintenance workouts. It’s targeted cardio. A lot of ladders. A lot of footwork [drills]. We work on hitting and blocking techniques.”
Essentially, they go through the same regimen NFL players go through in camp, including memorizing the playbook. All while having to hold down a day job to afford to pay the league fee for participation, as well as expenses.
The first game is the thing these 14-plus athletes on each team look forward to after many months of training. That first game is when they finally have a chance to see if all the hard work was enough. The Temptations have won five LFL championships, so there’s a considerable amount of pressure on these girls to make it to the postseason each year.
Harvey is a behavior specialist by day and athlete at night. She puts in the work and her body reflects that. Even though people many people don’t agree with the attire mandated by the LFL, it’s not all that much different from what I used to wear as a track athlete at the University of Oregon.
As I’m writing this, I find myself considering trying out again for the LFL as a challenge to myself. I love the training, the competition, and being able to knock someone down on their behind.
For those who want to try out, camps will be coming up in December. For those who want to check out their first LFL game, it might be coming to your area in the spring of 2018.
As for Danielle Harvey, when asked how more years she has left in her, she says, “It is more about how my body feels. If my body feels good, I am willing.”
One thing is for sure: she doesn’t need to sacrifice her body, she is not making money from this, but she does it becasue she’s passionate about football. And no one can take that away from her.
