Athlete Profile

Zeffie Angelikas—Philadelphia Liberty Belles National Women’s Football League 

She’s always loved football. Zeffie Angelikas remembers sitting at home in Philadelphia watching NFL games with her Dad.

Her favorite team? The Miami Dolphins who won her allegiance “After I met the Blackwood brothers when I was in the third grade,” she said.

After playing softball, basketball and volleyball through high school and college, Angelikas began playing flag football with a local team. “It’s like an adrenaline rush,” she said. “I just love playing football.

“For one thing you really have to come together as a team. In softball if the batter hits it to you at shortstop it’s you and the first baseman playing but when it comes to football every single person has to be involved.”

Now she’s getting ready to play a different kind of football; the kind with helmets and shoulder pads. The 29-year old Angelikas is a wingback with the fledging Philadelphia Liberty Belles of the National Women’s Football League. The team held a series of tryouts in the fall and began formal workouts in January in anticipation of the season beginning in March. The league hopes to have between five and 10 franchises in place. The players will be paid only after expenses for things like equipment, insurance and stadium rentals are taken care of but Angelikas freely admits it’s the game itself that lures her, not dollar signs.

She has a full-time job at a YMCA but works at her other “job” seven days a week. She’s always kept herself in good shape but now she’s working on getting her body into football shape, running six miles a day and working with weights.

Angelikas admits she got some mixed reaction when she told her family and friends she was going to play tackle football. “People who know me best said ‘Do it, it’s definitely you,’” she said. “My father actually didn’t know about it. I tried to hold it off from him; when I broke my hand last year he said ‘You have to stop playing sports.’ then I got interviewed (on local television) and I said ‘Oh wow, my parents don’t even know I’m playing but once I told my father he was very, very encouraging. The people that knew me were very encouraging, the people who didn’t know me were the ones who said ‘Girls can’t play football.’”

Angelikas and her teammates (a group of about 50) have been running drills and have learned the basic offensive and defensive systems that Head Coach Russ Carfagno wants to install. But before long they’ll be starting contact drills. For many of the Liberty Belles it will be a leap into the great unknown.

“There are a couple girls who’ve played rugby,” Angelikas said. “And a couple who played for the New York Sharks (in the competing Women’s Professional Football League.) The rest of us are going to be surprised. I honestly don’t know how I’m going to feel when I start getting hit. And I’ll have to learn how to catch with pads on.”

But it’s a challenge that Angelikas is determined to meet. Already she’s anticipating Opening Day and taking the field in front of a stadium full of fans.

“I think there’s going to be a lot of butterflies,” she said. “I'm going to be very nervous but excited at the same time. It’s history in the making.”