A few days ago news broke that Toni Harris made his story by signing a football scholarship to Central Methodist University in Missouri. This may seem like a normal accomplishment for an everyday football player, but for Toni this is a huge accomplishment for two reasons. First Toni is a female, and she plays a skill position, making her the first ever to do so. After this news broke we decided to take a look into her journey to get to this point in her life.
At age 6 Toni started playing football in Detroit the city she grew up in. The journey was never easy growing up, being an outlier on team full of guys. This obstacle never stopped her. She would eventually play in middle school only to get kicked off that team. Then she took the next steps of playing for her high school. This was no easy task either. Harris told ESPN in January, “A lot of coaches didn’t believe in me…A coach told me Nobody’s ever going to play you.” Once again Toni beat the odds and landed at East Los Angeles College. There she would grind it out and earn playing time. One of the first schools to offer her was Bethany college which is an NAIA school in Kansas. This was one of five schools to offer Harris. She eventually would choose CMU as her new home. There has been female players in college before, but none of them were skill positions. This accomplishment has broken barriers and may be the start of something new. #NextBigThing