Bwogi isn’t just playing football to fill her free time, not that she has that much of it. She’s a flag football coach with the Auburn Rec Department, has helped coach freshman softball at Edward Little and is a Girl Scout Brownie leader in Lewiston.

This is Bwogi’s first year with the Freeze. The team wanted her to play for them last year, but she had already committed to play for New England Storm of Medford, Mass., in the Women’s Professional Football League.

The long trips back and forth to practices and games in Massachusetts kept her away from her family. With the Freeze, she practices twice a week in Portland and plays on Saturday.

“I can manage the time better now,” she said. “We have a two-hour practice, but I’m usually home by nine, and it’s only Wednesday and Thursday. The kids know this is what I love to do, so they don’t ever complain at all. They love to be at the games and the practices. They tell people that I’m their football superhero. That’s what they say.”

Haleigh, Bwogi’s oldest daughter, tells her friends and schoolmates that her mother plays football.

“They don’t believe me,” she said. “so I show them her uniform.”

Bwogi says she won’t push her girls into football or other traditionally male sports. She hopes, however, that her example shows them and other girls that they don’t have to stand on the sidelines and lead the cheers if they’d rather be on the gridiron leading the blocking.

Cornerstone of the line

At 5-foot-7, 240 pounds, Bwogi usually leads the blocking for the Freeze. She’s the starting left tackle, generally considered the most important position on the offensive line, as well as the long snapper on special teams. She also has filled in at center.

“She’s athletic and physical. I’m not afraid of putting her in front of anybody (to block),” said Freeze head coach Jason McLeod. “She’s struggled a little this year, but part of her problem has been learning a new system. At times, she’s been indecisive.”

“I get taken out of games when I make mistakes, and I expect that. I tell my coaches to be as hard as they can on me because if they’re not, I’m not going to be,” Bwogi said. “I’ve had my coach almost make me cry. But you know what? That’s okay, because it’s going to make me better. We’re not 15-year-old high school kids. We’re adult women.”

Freeze players are given playbooks with new plays to study every week and work their way through rigorous practices and regular film sessions with an experienced, seven-man coaching staff. The group includes Winthrop High School head coach Chris Kempton and former Lewiston head coach and current Bates assistant Skip Capone.

There is a difference between coaching men and women, McLeod said. The coaches have to look a little harder keeping their intensity up in practices in games. He added that women are also more attentive and willing to take coaching. That comes in handy for a team likxe the Freeze, where so many of the players never played organized football before joining the team.

“They’re like sponges,” McLeod said. “They soak in everything you tell them. They never want to stop learning about the game. We rely on the girls that have had prior football experience a little more heavily. Beth handles our higher expectations well.”

Turning the wheel

Bwogi says friends and relatives that have seen her play, particularly men, are surprised by how physical the women get during games.

“I’ve had some good games. I’ve put some people out of games,” she said. “We played Massachusetts and put their best linebacker out, unconscious, with a concussion actually. Just turned the wheel on her. She was coming after my quarterback. What am I going to do? I hit her and she hit the ground, out.

“I’ve been chop-blocked. I had a huge blood clot on my leg that almost had to be split open. We have a lot of teams that we play against that spear in the back. I have bruises all over, but I’m a lineman. That’s what you get.”

The hostilities stay on the field, she said. Home teams in the NWFA usually host their visitors at a post-game party, and there’s a lot more cameraderie than you’d see from two professional men’s teams getting together after knocking each other around on a Sunday afternoon.

The Freeze went winless last year and have started this season 0-3, but the team has improved against some of the toughest competition in the league and is now in the midst of a softer stretch in its schedule. Bwogi remains optimistic that her team will win its first game soon, perhaps even embarking on a winning streak.

Wins and losses won’t be the determining factors in how long Bwogi continues doing what she loves to do the most, though.

“I’ll be 29 this year. Usually 29 or 30 for a pro football player is the end. But I will stop when it stops being fun,” she said. “Right now, it’s fun.”

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