Antoinette “Toni” Harris has never been one to pay much mind to outside noise.
The haters have said she is too small. Too slow. She has always been doubted, told she doesn’t belong and that all of her dream-chasing will end in disappointment.
Yet, Harris – who overcame ovarian cancer and lost half her body weight as a teenager – has persevered and remained hell-bent on proving her naysayers wrong. Especially when it comes to football.
So this week when Harris, 22, became the first woman to receive a college football scholarship at a skilled position, her history of barrier-breaking continued. The Detroit native, who has played free safety at East Los Angeles Community College for the past two seasons, signed a national letter of intent to play for Central Methodist University, an NAIA school located in Fayette, Missouri.
Harris chose Central Methodist over six other suitors, all of which were offering scholarships. While Harris hopes to eventually to reach the NFL, taking the latest step toward her dream just required an opportunity – and someone to give her the chance.
Central Methodist coach David Calloway offered both. And Harris, who lives by a mantra that is tattooed on her side, was more than happy to accept – all while being fueled by the words that have come to define her.
Be so good they can’t ignore you.
“(People) don’t want females in this sport and so if you want the chance, you do have to be so good they can’t ignore you,” Harris said during an interview on The Today Show this week. “Because one you are that good, people will be reaching out.
“If you have the talent, they’ll find you and I’m guessing they found me.”
Calloway’s persistence in not only finding Harris but pursuing her on the recruiting trail paid off. But as the coach of a small college football program that routinely doesn’t typically receive much media attention before this week, beating out the competition meant showing Harris that he meant business.
Going about the business of football for Calloway however, isn’t always easy. Unlike much larger universities like Alabama, which spent $56.2 million on football in 2017, and that boasts recruiting budgets well in the hundreds of thousands of dollar range, Central Methodist has to keep things lean and mean.
The school, which did not respond to questions about its athletic budget, charges its 1,060 students $24,420 for tuition and fees.
“We’re barely holding it together,” Calloway joked about the size of his budget during a telephone interview on Wednesday. “We can’t travel a lot – we have to pick and choose our spots. We just make it work.”
Despite the constant financial limitations he faces, Calloway keeps recruiting California as an emphasis for his program. Harris is the third former East Los Angeles Community College player on the CMU roster, which grew with this week’s 34-player recruiting class. The Eagles program includes a mix of rural and urban talent – all of which Calloway has discovered through tireless recruiting efforts. But because his budget allows for only two recruiting trips to the West Coast each year, Calloway relied on text messages, Facetime and Twitter to maintain regular contact with Harris.
The Eagles finished last season with a 4-6 record, but Calloway believes that the key to recruiting is to provide players like Harris with an opportunity not only to win football games but to further their education.
Harris liked what she heard, which led her to sign her Letter of Intent during an emotional ceremony in Los Angeles.
At 5-foot-7 and 164 pounds, Harris isn’t satisfied with stopping now that she joins Adams State University kicker Becca Longo as the only two women to accept a football scholarship at the Division II level or higher.
Calloway hasn’t given much thought about what adding Harris to his program could mean beyond the football field. Harris is already no stranger to notoriety. She starred in a Toyota Super Bowl commercial that was narrated by Jim Nantz and that centers around Harris’s knack for breaking barriers in a journey she hopes results in her being the first woman to play in the NFL.
During her Today Show appearance, Harris said, “The future is female.”
Calloway has treated Harris just like any other recruit and said that will continue as she prepares to join the Central Methodist program. While Harris said her teammates at East Los Angeles accepted her and became like a second family, she won’t be surprised if she experiences some doubters as she steps up to the next level.
Calloway, for his part, won’t tolerate any such attitudes.
“If guys aren’t comfortable with it, there’s plenty of other schools they can take their talent to,” Calloway said. “But we feel strongly about the group of young men and the structure we have in our university that we don’t think there will be any issues moving forward.”
Harris loves when people tell her she can’t do something. Tell her no and it only motivates her to change the way people look at her. And while she has spent her lifetime tackling obstacles that come her way – including cancer – Harris refuses to stop until she has proved everyone wrong.
For Calloway, that’s the type of player he wants.
“The biggest thing we look for is people that are passionate about being successful,” he said. “Obviously, that’s something she is passionate about.”
