Less than a year into her first season with the Lingerie Football League’s Seattle Mist, Katie Ryckman already has grasped a fundamental truth of the game – defense might win games, but offense sells the game.
“I like defense because I like tackling, that’s one of my favorite parts of playing,” said Ryckman, a 2001 Auburn High School graduate. “But you tend to get noticed more with yardage and touchdowns and stuff like that. It’s been a nice balance for me because I’m being noticed for what I do on the offense, but I really like to tackle on defense.”
Ryckman, a running back, wide receiver and safety, didn’t know what to expect when she decided to try out for the semipro Mist.
“I was watching (a news clip of tryouts) with my fiancee and my parents,” she said. “At first, it was more pointing and laughing than anything else. I just kind of thought it was a big joke.”
Gradually, however, the idea of playing for the Mist began to intrigue her.
At the time, Ryckman was playing rugby for the Emerald City Mudhens, a sport she was introduced to while attending Colby College in Maine.
After moving back to the Northwest to take a job with Microsoft as a marketing specialist, Ryckman turned out to play rugby for the Seattle Breakers, and then the Mudhens.
“I though, ‘OK, I’m playing rugby because it’s a club, so why don’t I get paid to play football,” she said. “The rugby girls are twice the size of these football girls, plus I’d get pads.”
Soon the 5-foot-6, 123-pound Ryckman found herself at the Mist’s April tryouts. At first, she wasn’t sure how serious the actual sport was.
“I wouldn’t say it was a lot better than I expected because they still told you to wear short-shorts and a sports bra for the tryouts. They wanted to see your body,” Ryckman said. “And then you had to sprint, catch and do agility drills. I think there were about 50 or so girls there, and maybe about 10 of them stood out in my mind. They looked like they could be athletic. So it wasn’t a 100-percent joke.”
Ryckman finally was won over by the coaching staff.
After getting a callback, Ryckman began her career as a lingerie football player.
“Slowly but surely the team started to come together,” Ryckman said. “At first, it was a little disappointing because I thought it was more of a modeling agency than a football team. But as we kind of grew together and everybody’s skill sets began to develop and our understanding of football increased, it really made me see that we could be a football team. I knew that it would work as long as we stuck to it, which most of us did.”
Although her dad was skeptical about her decision to play for the Mist at first, Ryckman said her mom was supportive.
“They’re Mormon, but my mom was suprisingly cool with it,” she said. “She’s actually very proud of me. She thinks its great. She always wanted me to do acting and modelling. And she knows I love sports, so she knows this a great marriage of the two. My dad, on the other hand, was not so enthusiastic about me joining the team.”
“Even after I’d been playing and practicing for a few months, I still couldn’t talk to him about it,” she continued. “It’s not that he would get upset, but he was very sarcastic … he was not happy with it. It took until our first game until he took it serious.”
After attending a game at the Showare Center to see his daughter play, Ryckman said he saw the light.
“Now he’s up on his feet at games, yelling and cheering,” she said. “That was great to see him beaming after we won our first game.”
Outside her family, Ryckman said reactions are mixed when people find out about her extracurricular activity.
“I definitely get some glances from some of the females at work,” she said. “But outside the office with guys, pretty much all guys, have thought it was amazing. They want to know more about it, how it started and why they haven’t heard about it.”
Along the way, Ryckman said her perception of the sport has come around as well.
“I went in thinking that it was going to be a bunch of models who didn’t even know how to run, and maybe just didn’t quite make it in the modelling industry, and were going to be out here pretending to play football,” she said. “After a couple of months, those girls dropped out and it’s become football.”
“I’m really surprised with every game we play, how hard-hitting it’s become,” she said. “I’m thinking these girls are smaller and I’ve got pads so it’s not going to hurt as much. But my goodness, was I wrong. They are out to prove something. They know there is a perception of the league being a washed-up-model kind of thing. So they are out for blood.”
The Seattle Mist, currently 3-1 on the season, could qualify for the postseason. For more information visit the team’s Web site at www.lflus.com/seattlemist/
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About the Lingerie Football League
It all began with the inaugural Lingerie Bowl, a marketing event first conducted during Super Bowl XXXVIII in 2004. Building on what has become an annual event, the Lingerie Football League was begun in 2009, featuring 10 teams from Seattle, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, San Diego, Philadelphia, Chicago, New York, Miami and Tampa Bay competing for a chance to play in the Lingerie Bowl.
The sport itself is full-contact indoor football, featuring teams of seven-girls per side vying to outscore their opponent. The action takes place on 50-yard long by 30-yard wide fields with end zones located at either end. Players wear helmets, shoulder pads, elbow pads and knee pads for protection and sport uniforms consisting of bra, panties and garters.
The Seattle Mist compete at the Showare Center in Kent and are currently atop the LFL’s Western Conference with a 3-1 record. The league will conduct playoffs Feb. 5 in Miami, with Lingerie Bowl VII taking place during halftime of the Super Bowl on Feb. 6.
