Day in the life: Minnesota Vixens

For Shannon Davis and her Women's Pro Football League teammates, game day is a mix of practice, pain and pride

Davis is taking a pass at playing pro football Keri Pickett

By Laura Billings

As a NASA engineer, Shannon Davis is more familiar with launching a space shuttle than launching a sports league. But now, on a one-year academic leave from NASA, she's trying to do just that -- help get the Women's Professional Football League off the ground. Davis is a quarterback for the Minnesota Vixens, one of two teams in the WPFL, based in Edina, Minn. Though she's no stranger to sports (she attended Calhoun Junior College in Decatur, Ala., on a softball scholarship), the 28-year-old Athens, Ala., native admitted that she was "still getting used to the shoulder pads" as she suited up for the league's kickoff on Oct. 9 in St. Paul against the Lake Michigan Minx.

Uniforms weren't all that Davis and her teammates had to adjust to that first night of a seven-game tour. For one thing, the 80-plus players on the tour -- many of them softball, rugby and track athletes -- had practiced together for less than six weeks and had never played four full quarters of NFL-style football. For another, there's the issue of salary: No one gets one. A .25% profit-sharing deal pays players $200 to $900 per game. "We're not doing it for the money," says Davis.

The Vixens lost the inaugural game 33-6 before a crowd of 2,463 at St. Paul's Midway Stadium. "I lost count of how many times I got sacked," says Davis. (For the record, it was only two.) Complicating matters was Minx wide receiver Wendy Brown, an Olympic heptathlete and former world-record holder in the triple jump, who had eight receptions (for 150 yards) and scored two touchdowns.

Still, Davis is hopeful about the WPFL's future -- despite the failure of three attempts to launch women's leagues in the 1970s. "Sure, we're going to be learning from our mistakes the first few games, but I think we've got a good product," she says. "People just have to give us a chance."

 
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