Yahoo Sports Not your typical high school football player: Girl plays O-line for a state title contender
THORNTOWN, Ind. – Justin Pelley knows the old axiom that a coach is not supposed to have favorites. He prefaces what he is about to say with a qualifying line of, “I know I’m not supposed to say who is my favorite.”
But Pelley, 41, in his 10th year coaching football at Western Boone and has led the Stars to three state championships. He is not getting run out of town anytime soon. And it is unlikely anyone on the team is going to argue his choice, anyway.
“It’s not a secret,” Pelley said. “I’m going to say this at our banquet, too. Emmy Roys is my favorite all-time football player I’ve ever had. I don’t see that ever changing, to be honest. You talk about the impact she’s had on our program and we have kids, girls, who look up to her and playing flag football because of Emmy. She’s a tremendous person all the way around.”
Roys is one of 19 seniors on the Western Boone football team. She is the only girl on the team. But she is not just on the team. Roys is a player. She is a regular in the rotation at offensive tackle and has started a handful of games.
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“We love playing with her,” said teammate Trevor Weakley, who leads Western Boone with 1,298 rushing yards going into Friday’s Class 3A Sectional 29 semifinal against Danville. “At this point, she’s just one of us.”
Roys started playing football when she was in first grade. She remembers seeing kids playing at South Side Park in Lebanon and telling her dad she wanted to play. By middle school, she was playing for Western Boone’s school teams. She competed in other sports growing up, like softball and basketball, and expected her football-playing days were probably nearing an end in eighth grade, even though she was earning regular playing time.
“I was coming into high school, in eighth grade, and I was really scared,” she said. “I can’t believe now I was scared, but we’d walk to practice and see those humungous guys on the field (with the high school team). I was like, ‘No way, they are going to break me.’”
And Roys did think about quitting. She loved basketball, anyway, and throwing the discus and shot put would soon become part of her life in high school. She had other sports to fill her time. But her football teammates would not hear of that talk.
Weakley’s father, Lee, was her coach in sixth grade. “She put dudes in the dirt,” Trevor said with a laugh. She started every game. But Emmy also knew the strength advantages she enjoyed at that age would be difficult to overcome once the boys went through puberty and added strength. But Trevor and others encouraged her to keep playing. “Emmy, you going to play football next year?” was a question she heard often.
“I couldn’t let him down,” Emmy said. “I always looked up to Trevor because he was one of the best players on the football team — he still is. Every day it would be like, ‘Emmy, are you going to play football next year?’ I was finally like, ‘Yeah, I’m playing.’”
Strength, as it turns out, was not an issue. Roys does not know exactly her current max lifts, but she recently put up 315 pounds three times on back squat and bench pressed 185 pounds three times. “I’m pretty average (compared to) the guys,” she said. “I can lift more than a lot of them. I’m like in the middle. But I’m not super weak compared to them.”
Mental strength cannot be measured like a back squat or bench press. But her sophomore year, proved to be a crucial year for her confidence on the football field. Roys was named “scout team player of the week” several times during the year and at the end of Western Boone’s third consecutive Class 2A state championship season in 2020, she was honored as the Stars’ “scout team player of the year.”
“I was just trying to go as hard as I possibly could and we had some big linemen,” she said. “But when I got that award at the end of the year and then looked back on it, I was like, ‘Maybe I can keep up with them.’”
Pelley said “courage” if the first word that comes to mind when he thinks of Roys, who is listed at 5-9, 205 pounds. She could have easily decided to focus on basketball and track. She is one of the best players on Western Boone’s basketball team, averaging 9.4 points and 10.9 rebounds as a junior, and set the school record last year is the discus and is one foot away from doing the same in the shot put.
“She kept getting stronger with her mentality and courage,” Pelley said. “It’s all about mindset. If you have to be the one starting and scoring touchdowns, that’s fine. But she accepted her role her freshman and sophomore year and she was going against really good people.”
She can more than hold her own, too. Due to injuries this season, she transitioned from getting most of her repetitions on defense to the offensive side. In several games late in the season, she has been in the rotation at offensive tackle. After a recent practice, Pelley shouted out Roys and sophomore Josh Dickey for being ready to contribute when they were called on.
“Coach Pelley has always been that person (to lift me up),” Roys said. “Even in grade school he would come down to the elementary school and say hi to all the kids. He never treated me any different than anyone else, but he lets me know he’s always there for me even if I’m going through hard times.”
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Roys has the unique perspective of going from going from a boys to a girls sport. “If anyone has a problem in football, it gets settled at practice,” she said. “No bickering. It’s a lot different.”
Though a girl playing football — especially on the offensive or defensive line — is still somewhat rare, it is even more rare that Roys hears anything from an opponent. She used to. But most of the opponents Western Boone plays against are now aware of her, she said.
“In years past people might say, ‘Oh, she’s just a girl,’ when I’m on the line,” she said. “My guys always have my back. But recently there’s been nothing. I don’t think some people realize I’m a girl until we’re going through the handshake line and they see my ponytail.”
On her own team, Roys said she has never encountered a problem. Pelley can think of one, though. When Roys was a freshman, the team was about to leave for the state championship game at Lucas Oil Stadium. Roys was still getting ready in the locker room when the bus left without her. “We had to come back and get her,” Pelley said.
Roys said she did not play football to be a role model or make a statement or anything like that. But she does feel validated about sticking with football through high school when she receives an occasional Instagram message from someone who calls her an inspiration or gets asked to take a picture with a middle-school girl who is also playing football. Her ’ basketball teammates are some of her biggest football fans, holding up her photo in the student cheer block.
Maybe more than anything Roys has learned a lot about herself. By sticking it out, her teammates and coaches have learned a lot from her.
“Coach Pelley teaches us a lot of life lessons,” she said. “Just being on the team, working hard and being around everyone, I think it will forever have an effect on how I grow and learn as a person.”
Call Star reporter Kyle Neddenriep at (317) 444-6649.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: High school girl finds success on offensive line for football team
