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Take Pride in your team

Rick Casillas
The Commuter

Monday, April 27, 2009

Last Saturday, members of the Corvallis Pride and Portland Shockwave spilled into the Corvallis high school football field to battle each other. Never heard of them? Most people haven’t, yet. Both are members of the Independent Women’s Football League, a national all women’s full tackle football league that draws teams from over 50 cities. Formed in 2000, the IWFL boasts a dedicated and growing fan base, who enthusiastically support the over 1600 women that participate in the league. Our own local team, the Corvallis Pride is owned and coached by former player Beth Buglione, whose seven year investment in the team comes from a desire to foster a dream for her players. Says Buglione, “There’s nothing like providing the opportunity for these women to put on the pads and live the dream of playing professional football, it’s an amazing thing to watch.”

The Pride have had a short, but illustrious career, successfully appearing in playoffs nearly every season since the league’s inception. After a showing of only 15 players this last season, Buglione sought out an opportunity to merge her team with another, absorbing 8 players from the California based Redding Rage into her roster. So rather than conditioning and drills, the Pride’s first few months have been filled with commuting and coffee driving for 5 ½ hour stretches each direction to practice with one another, indicative of the players’ dedication to the sport. “I am extremely proud of this team, when you think about that we’ve only had 6 practices to get this team together it’s amazing that we even know each other’s names. To see that you can get women to come together that quickly, that’s due to the players discipline and their knowledge of the game. We can do a lot of things because of that,” says Buglione. That discipline served them well as they fought valiantly against the Shockwave who nearly doubled their roster size. Thanks to a strong ground game and stoic defensive line, the Pride maintained a 7-7 score until the third quarter, when the Shockwave pulled ahead creating a gap too wide to close, eventually finishing ahead 20-7. The Pride play all of their home games at CHS. For details on upcoming games, visit www.corvallispride.com.

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