Page 6 - Gender Inequality in Sports: From Title IX to World Titles

SARAH FULLER, SOCCER AND FOOTBALL
PLAYER, AND HER PREDECESSORS

In the fall of 2020, Sarah Fuller was the goalkeeper for the
women’s Southeast Conference championship soccer team at
Vanderbilt University. When Vanderbilt’s football team had its
kickers sidelined due to COVID-19, then football coach Derek
Mason turned to Fuller to replace them. Though soccer players
have been called on to handle kicking duties for football teams
in both high school and college, Vanderbilt doesn’t have a men’s
soccer team to call on. Fuller knew her presence on the football
field would be historic: “I just think it’s incredible that I am able to
do this, and all I want to do is be a good influence to the young
girls out there.”
Fuller then became the first woman to kick in a Power Five
conference—the elite conferences in college football—in
Vanderbilt’s game on November 28, 2020. For that kick, she was
named the Southeastern Conference Co-Special Teams Player of
the Week. She then became the first woman to score in a Power
Five football game on December 12, 2020, when she kicked
two different extra points
after touchdowns.
Fuller is the third woman
to play in the Football Bowl
Subdivision of the Division I
National Collegiate Athletic
Association (NCAA). In
2003 Katie Hnida kicked
two extra points for the
University of New Mexico.
Fuller kicked off the second half of In 2015 April Goss kicked
the Vanderbilt-Missouri game on an extra point for Kent
November 28, 2020, and became the
first woman to play in a Southeastern State University.
Conference football game.

6