Football foes ask, 'She's your coach?'

It is the moment a defensive coach relives in dreams.

A passing down. Coach calls a blitz. The line heaves forward, and the quarterback goes down before he gets a pass off.

A sorry sound escapes his lips. Never knew what hit him.

The Schwab Middle School Hornets heard that sound often this fall, bulldozing their way to an undefeated season and outscoring their opponents, 210-50.

It was sweet news for everyone at the Northside school, since this is the first time Schwab has had a football team in five years because of budget cuts. But nobody liked it more than the defensive coach.

If you don't believe it, you should see the grin on Elaine Stephenson's face.

It's rather a long distance across the football field. Hard to see just who that defensive coach is, with the short-cropped strawberry blond hair and coaching shirt. All opponents knew was that, judging from their deprivation of points, it was somebody good.

So, heads down in defeat, they'd make their way to the middle of the field for the grudging handshakes. But the line always slowed when they reached Coach Stephenson. They'd gape in surprise.

''They'd walk away and I'd hear them saying to each other, 'Geez, that's a woman coach!' '' she says, eyes twinkling merrily. ''I've had a couple of officials look at me funny, too.''

A dream of coaching

She got there the old-fashioned way. She ran. She passed. She got tackled. She ate mud.

As quarterback for the Middletown Mavericks, a women's professional team, she led her team to the league's championship in the early 1980s.

Forget the cute little flags around the waist. This was the tackle kind.

''I still miss getting hit,'' she says wistfully.

Now she teaches her players how to pour on the hits.

She wants low pops, and bodies scattered on the ground. She promotes open aggression. She likes everything about their eight-points-per-opponent average except that they gave away eight points.

''At first, the other teams' players were like, 'She's your coach?' '' remembers nose guard Eric Brundage. ''Then they saw the defensive plays we had, and they wished she was their coach. They thought she had a husband in the NFL.''

Actually, she knows more about the AFL. She grew up watching the Cleveland Browns with her dad. Now she talks Bengals football with her brothers-in-law.

First chances all around

''This isn't a crusade,'' she says. ''I want you to like me, respect me for the knowledge I have and my hard work. Let me do my job and judge me that way.''

Schwab cleaned up on everybody. Elaine Stephenson's a winner.

Someday she hopes to move on, to be a head coach at a high school. But it's fitting that her first chance came at Schwab.

Her players - all 40 of them - understand the value of a first chance. After Cincinnati Public Schools sacrificed junior high athletics to budget cuts, they rode the bench for five years. This year, somebody got smart and handed them the ball.

Their principal, Dixon Edwards, says everything got better at Schwab - discipline, grades, attitude and especially Tuesday afternoons. Everybody's good on game day.

Elaine Stephenson sat on the bench for 36 years. Being a good sport. Coaching basketball. Refereeing softball. Longing for football.

This year, someone handed her a clipboard.

It fit her grip perfectly, as if it was meant to be there all along.

Krista Ramsey's column appears in The Enquirer on Saturdays. Write her at 312 Elm St., Cincinnati 45202 or fax at 768-8340.

Published Nov. 9, 1996.