With her parents watching from the stands while wearing handmade “Play Like a Girl” masks provided by one of Fuller’s friends, Fuller opened the second half with a low kick that bounced to the 35, where Missouri pounced on it for no return. The play was by design, Vanderbilt football Coach Derek Mason said.

Mason said he was impressed with Fuller’s willingness to try something new, especially when so many of the team’s players had either gone home for the holidays or been forced to quarantine. “She could have easily said no, but instead she prepared all week and did what she was supposed to do,” he said. “She was as prepared as anyone for this game.”

Fuller is not the first woman to play college football in the top tier of Division I, the Football Bowl Subdivision: Katie Hnida was the first woman to score in an F.B.S. game as a place-kicker for New Mexico in August 2003, and April Goss scored while playing for Kent State in 2015. Ashley Martin is credited as the first woman to score in any N.C.A.A. Division I football game for Jacksonville State University, which is in the Football Championship Subdivision. And Becca Longo became the first woman to receive an N.C.A.A. football scholarship to a Division II school when she signed to Adams State as a kicker in 2017 (she never kicked for the school because of injury, transferring to the Gila River Hawks of the Hohokam Junior College Athletic Conference in 2019).

Source: New York Times

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