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She's a Warrior
First-year coach Natalie Randolph, 26, is believed to be the only woman on a varsity football coaching staff in the Washington area.
(P. Keres - The Post)
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"I thought, 'Where'd she get her football knowledge?' " Headen said. "She didn't play high school football. She didn't play college football."
At the coaches' first meeting, while they watched video from last season, Fuller asked Randolph about her approach to the two-minute and no-huddle offenses.
As she began to reply, Fuller said, "Well, draw it up on the board."
Here was Randolph's personal two-minute drill. She showed how the Divas' offense attacks a cover-1, cover-2, cover-3 and even the seldom-used cover-4 pass defense. The rest of the coaches nodded in approval.
"I watched her and she knows the game," Headen said.
As she returned to her seat, she was thrilled.
"For me, it's more of 'lead by example' " for Randolph, said Woodson quarterbacks coach Thomas Byrd, who played the position before graduating from Eastern in 1992. "You can read a book and say you learned it that way. But based on her doing it on the field, I had confidence in her to do the work.
Randolph still has other adult opinions to change. She said some have approached her at practice and asked, "So why are you coaching football?" When she explains that it's a combination of her love of both the game and teaching, many people still don't understand.
Opposing coaches, too, are still a little taken aback by Randolph.
"I thought it was a rumor," Ballou Coach Moe Ware said. "But you look at their receiving game, and they know what they're doing."
Woodson ranks third in the DCIAA in passing yards and touchdown receptions.
Randolph said she is still uncomfortable when teams line up for the postgame handshake. Some opponents have mistaken her for the team trainer, and don't acknowledge her.
"I hate this part," she said as the Warriors lined up after defeating Cardozo 34-0 Sept. 29. "I hate shaking hands because they walk right past me and don't realize I'm a coach."
