Sarah Fuller kicks an extra point during the first quarter of Vanderbilt’s game against Tennessee on Saturday in Nashville, Tennessee. She kicked another later in the game. George Walker IV/The Tennessean via AP
Sarah Fuller made history again Saturday, when she became the first woman to score in a Power Five conference football game by kicking a pair of extra points in Vanderbilt’s 42-17 loss to Tennessee.
“I was just super excited when we got that touchdown. I was ready to go out and roll,” she said. “The guys were super pumped up and encouraging, so I was very excited to get out there and finally do what I’ve been training for the past few weeks.
“This whole time has been if I can do it, if I’m good enough to do it. It wasn’t if I was a girl or not. So that’s something I’ve really appreciated. At the end of the day, they treated me like an athlete and that’s the best I could ask for.”
Last month, her squib kick to open the second half at Missouri made her the first woman to appear in a Power Five game. She missed the opportunity to score when Missouri shut out Vanderbilt, 41-0.
She got that chance on Vanderbilt’s third drive Saturday, after Ken Seals threw an 18-yard touchdown pass to Cam Johnson late in the first quarter. She converted the extra point and pumped her fist as the ball sailed over the crossbar. An official gave her the ball on the sideline.
She added another extra point in the fourth quarter.
Fuller was a goalkeeper for Vanderbilt’s soccer team, which won the SEC tournament championship last month. She never scored on the pitch, but she compared her extra point attempts to her experience in the net, where each challenge presented two outcomes.
“I’d say it’s like one of those game-winning saves you have to make,” she said. “It could go either way at that point and you got to make that big-time save, so that’s probably the closest I’d compare it to.”
Fuller became the fourth woman to play in a major college football game – following Ashley Martin of Jacksonville State in 2001, Katie Hnida of New Mexico in 2002 and April Goss of Kent State in 2015 – but the first to appear in the Power Five, the sport’s top tier, on Nov. 28 at Missouri.
She remained on the roster even after Vanderbilt’s other kickers came out of quarantine and rejoined the team. Vanderbilt fell to 0-9 on Saturday; coach Derek Mason was fired the day after the Missouri loss.
The Commodores are scheduled to travel to Georgia for their season finale next Saturday. It comes as Fuller has acclimated to her football life: her schedule, her teammates and her technique.
“Last week, I was very critical of everything I was doing,” she said. “I was like, ‘Oh, this is why my plant foot was too far,’ or like, ‘Kicked it too much with my toe on this.’ But this week, I just really focused on just going out and kicking – not thinking about it too much. I felt like I really got the technique down last week, so this week was just going out and doing my thing.”
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