Celia Snyder was first introduced to football by her dad. Every Sunday they would pop up a bag of popcorn and settle onto the couch to watch the NFL.
At about the same age boys start idolizing players and imagining themselves on the football field, Celia, then a 7-year-old hockey player, gymnast and swimmer, was having the same thoughts.
Looking out the car window, as she rode past the Pop Warner football field in Newton Highlands in the fall of 2006, and watching kids her size running up and down the field, she asked her parents, "When can I play?"
After a moment of shock, her parents told her they would look into it.
"I was completely surprised when she asked to play," said her mother, Abby Cohen. "I had always encouraged them to break out of stereotypes, but I wasn't expecting her to ask."
After checking the league's bylaws, Celia's father, Stewart Snyder, went to the registration in January. He filled out the forms, handed over a waiver and was told, "We're looking forward to seeing your son in the fall."
"Actually, it's my daughter," Stuart replied.
Standing 4 feet tall and weighing 72 pounds, Celia, 9, jogged onto the field last fall with a wide smile and a head of bouncy, brown curls. She was the only girl on her team of more than a dozen players. Only one other girl plays in the league.
For the most part, the fourth-grader says she has been accepted by her teammates. They all knew her name before she knew theirs and only once was she accosted by a teammate.
" 'So when are you going to quit?' " Celia recalled one teammate asking last season. When the coach got wind of it, he pulled the two aside and reminded them both that they were part of a team.
Celia says she has no plans to quit, even though her teammates are growing bigger and the bruises are coming more frequently. She says she likes it too much to walk away.
"I'm going to keep playing," she said. "I'm not going to stop."
As one of the youngest players on her team this year, the practices haven't been easy.
"I knew this year would be a test," Snyder said, referring to Celia's jump to the next age level. "I will support her whatever she decides to do and that would be true if I had a boy or a girl," he said. "But she made a commitment to be part of a team and she can't do it halfway."
Being a football-playing girl is an unusual thing, but it's been done before.
"We've had quite a few girls go through the program and good ones, too," said Tom DeStefano, vice president of the Newton Pop Warner league. "We encourage them to play."
Destefano says he has two boys who have played Pop Warner football and a 3-year-old daughter he'd like to see on the field one day.
"I want to show girls," Celia said, "if they want to play, they can and they should."
