Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, September 30, 1995 TAG: 9510020012
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: RAY COX STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: DUBLIN LENGTH: Long
Lorton was coaching a girls softball team and Casey was a player. During a particularly heated game, Casey was compelled to slide into a base. She did so with great purpose and vigor.
When she got up to dust herself off, Lorton could hardly bear to look.
``She was skinned up both arms from her wrist to her armpits,'' he said.
Being the father of a young girl himself, Lorton knew that it wasn't a particularly unusual condition for one to be in. He also knew that most 11-year-olds don't voluntarily put themselves in such a state.
But that didn't jolt him nearly as much as what happened next.
Casey turned to her teammates on the bench, her eyes shooting lightning bolts, her fists clinched white, and her cheeks flushing carmine, and exhorted them loudly to start getting after it.
Lorton had never seen anything like it.
``I mean, I'm comparing this to my daughter, Charlee, who was also on the team,'' he said. ``She's still playing with Barbies. She gets cut up like that and we're taking her to Radford Hospital.''
Lorton decided he was going to have to have a chat with Casey.
``I told her, 'Casey, you're going to have calm down a little bit,''' Lorton said. ``'This is girls softball.'''
So it wasn't that much of a surprise to him when he heard that she was interested in playing football for the Dublin Chiefs, a team he also coached.
Lorton paid a visit to Casey's parents, Sandy and Chuck Burns. Lorton had gone to high school with the then Sandy Rasnake and he thought he could level with her.
``He told me, 'I'm not going to treat her any differently than I do anybody else,'" Sandy Burns said.
That being agreeable to all, little Casey strapped it on and thus began her sandlot football career this fall. Ever since, she's taken on a new identity as the little girl who's playing football for Dublin.
Should anybody have the impression that she's in some sort of ceremonial capacity, Lorton makes haste to correct them.
``At first, we put her at quarterback and tried to keep her in a position where there wouldn't be a lot of hitting,'' he said. ``That was a mistake.''
Next, they tried her at defensive end. For those who are not intimate with the mechanics of football defenses, end is hardly a low-impact position. The gridiron equivalent of baseball's hot corner is action central.
Just how is little Casey acquitting herself as a reserve defensive end?
``She's amazed me,'' said one of her coaches, Turney Goad. ``She's tackled every running back we have on this team,''
Goad, her position coach, is proud of her.
``She's easy to coach,'' he said. ``She'll try anything you ask her to do.''
If Casey, a sturdy, 103-pounder playing against backs who usually weigh between 115 and 120 pounds and linemen who can and do weigh as much as 200 pounds or more, was intimidated by the prospect of playing with a bunch of roughneck old boys, she isn't letting on.
``Actually, I anticipated that they'd have been harder on me than they really have been,'' she said.
There's been some hazing, perhaps not all of it entirely good-natured, from one particular player.
``I think he was trying to see to it that she paid her dues,'' Goad said.
Casey is something of an athletic prodigy, never mind her sex. She was a success at basketball the first time she went out for a team. As for softball ...
``She can throw harder than I can,'' Lorton said. ``And I used to pitch batting practice without a glove. She whizzed one over my head one time and I knew right away she was different.
``She's an athlete.''
Her parents knew that already.
``I may be her mother, but I've yet to see anything this kid can't do,'' Sandy Burns said.
You might say that Casey came by her ability naturally. Both of her parents were athletic sorts, Sandy doing everything from softball to gymnastics and tennis, Chuck playing football, basketball and baseball where he grew up on the south side of Chicago.
Then there were her late grandparents, Silas and Ann Rasnake, beloved pioneering organizers and coaches in the Dublin recreation leagues.
``Mom would have been behind her 100 percent,'' Sandy Burns said. ``Dad would have thought she was crazy.''
Which may have been what her father thought too, but if he did, he didn't say so.
``This is the '90s,'' said he, a long-distance trucker by trade. ``The other stuff about girls not being able to do something is old cliche stuff. Go for it.''
What else did you expect him to say?
``I live with a house full of women [9-year-old daughter Heather is the other],'' he said. ``I can't tell Casey she can't do something just because she's a girl.''
What he could do was give her some advice.
``I told her, when you suit up, sooner or later, you're going to get your clock cleaned,'' he said.
Casey was aware that she was going to be engaging in a collision sport.
``I played pickup games of tackle at the elementary school last year and I was always the only girl,'' she said. ``Some of the guys I was playing with - T.J. Goad, Heath Reedy, Brian Booth, Danny Keith, Shannon Perkins - are on my team now.''
Of immense help to her was T.J. Goad, the quarterback and Turney Goad's son. Casey ran her plans past T.J. before she came out for the team.
``T.J. told her that if she wanted to play, to come on and play,'' Turney Goad said.
Having the quarterback and one of the best players on the team on your side makes a difference.
The coaches worried about what might happen at first. They knew they had a good, veteran team coming (the Chiefs started 3-0). They wondered how a girl would affect what could be delicate team chemistry, the term coaches use for the manner in which their players interact.
``It was a little hairy at first,'' said Alan Wheeling, another one of the coaches.
Everything settled down rather quickly, though.
``The players have been great,'' Lorton said. ``If they hadn't have accepted her as they did, then we would have had a real problem.''
That there was opposition at first or that any may be continuing doesn't seem to concern Casey.
``Let them think what they will,'' she said. ``I'm just having fun.''
by CNB