John Evans already knew that the girl he was scouting wore pigtails subtly poking from the bottom of her helmet. But would anyone else notice?
So last winter, the head coach from the Mansfield (Pa.) University sprint football team called one of his captains into his office and hit play on the grainy highlight video.
The captain watched with wide eyes.
“He went, ‘Man, Coach, he’s pretty good. You should try to get him,’” Evans recalled.
In that moment, with her long hair going unnoticed on the screen, Molly McLeer hurdled her first challenge at the college level, appearing to be just another talented recruit — and not a female football player.
McLeer, a freshman from Springfield who played for Jonathan Dayton High, went on to make history this season at Mansfield as the first woman to play in the Collegiate Sprint Football League, which was formed in 1936 with teams from the Ivy League and service academies as headliners. The league plays by NCAA rules but uses a 178-pound weight limit for all players.
While at least a dozen women have played college football nationwide since 1997, most have done so as placekickers. But unlike other female football pioneers, McLeer, 18, is playing tight end and on the offensive line at Mansfield — among the biggest, strongest players.
Molly McLeer prepares for a play with Mansfield College.Blaze Wood
“On the first day she looked at one of our offensive line coaches and said, ‘Coach, just treat me like the guys,’” Evans remembered. “And we do. She hangs right in there with them. They have a really tight bond.”
But it hasn’t always been that way.
While playing for Dayton High, McLeer and her parents said she endured sexual harassment and hostility from some teammates and coaches. Some players teased that she only joined the team because she wanted to date teammates, McLeer and her parents said. And over all four years, rather than being provided her own changing area, McLeer claimed at times she was forced to get dressed in a storage closet at the school until she suffered a season-ending shoulder injury in October 2024.
After her ensuing shoulder surgery, McLeer said she did not hear from teammates or coaches. She faced even further humiliation, as teammates didn’t even want her to join them on the field for an end-of-season celebration.
“Senior year just killed me,” McLeer said.
When asked to respond to McLeer’s allegations, Rachel Goldberg, superintendent of Springfield public schools, declined comment, citing “federal and state privacy laws” that prevent school officials from discussing student disciplinary matters.
In an era where more girls are playing football than ever before — including twin starters at Asbury Park High and a budding star at Scotch Plains-Fanwood — inclusivity on the gridiron has been touted far and wide. But some claim that hidden beneath the feel-good stories are lingering examples of resistance that show the struggle for true equality remains.
Look no further than McLeer, a legitimate talent who could have been a poster-child for the movement, but instead she says she was made to feel like an outcast.
Devastated by the treatment she said she endured in high school, McLeer wondered if she would ever again play football — a sport she had adored since fourth grade.
“I had to look and see what I really wanted and if it was worth it to go through all of this to get to where I am now,” McLeer said. “And to me, it was.”
Molly McLeer smiles while playing for the Springfield Junior Bulldogs.Dermot McLeer‘Molly crushed him’
It took two weeks before one of the boys mustered enough courage to tackle their female teammate. Even at 9, McLeer sensed her male counterparts were reluctant to hit a girl.
Then came the drill with the Springfield Junior Bulldogs in 2016 that changed everything.
Players were separated into two lines: Ball carriers on one side, tacklers on the other. Defenders were instructed to pursue the ball carriers and tackle on an angle. Most rushers were afraid of the contact and ducked out of bounds.
But McLeer took the ball and dashed up the sideline undeterred. The team’s star player and best defender charged after her and … Whack!
“Molly crushed him,” Dermot McLeer, her father, recalled. “She just ran right over him. One of the guys was like, ‘Can you tell Molly not to hurt the [star player], please?’”
The next day in school, word had traveled about McLeer’s toughness, as classmates looked at her with awe. But some of the boys didn’t seem as excited.
“Those boys were in a lose-lose situation,” Dermot McLeer said. “Either they beat the girl, and they beat a girl, or she won, and then they got ridiculed for it. That day, it was all physics. It had nothing to do with gender.”
But it was a start. McLeer also played soccer, but she eventually grew tired of drawing constant penalties for being too physical. She tried other sports, too. But none excited her the way football did.
McLeer was taller and heavier than most teammates at the time on the Junior Bulldogs, so she started on both the offensive and defensive lines.
And, over time, she earned both respect and her place within the team dynamic. Her teammates came to not only accept her, but protect her.
“It’s really hard being the team with the girl on it,” McLeer said. “But them standing up for me and being there for me, I love them for it and always will.”
When she needed to switch to custom shoulder pads that better fit the shape of her body, McLeer’s coaches placed the order. She credits those coaches — Tommy Desarno and Adam Solomine — for inspiring her football journey.
Off the field, McLeer describes herself as a “girly girl” who loves fashion and flowers. Her bedroom is painted pink, and she wears pink cleats and a pink mouth guard.
Her favorite hobby — outside of football — is sewing. Last New Year’s Eve, she wore a dress she made herself to a party. She used black satin fabric to construct a slip dress that hung from her shoulders with spaghetti straps.
“If you saw me outside of football, you wouldn’t expect I play football,” McLeer said. “People think of ‘tomboys.’ But I love wearing dresses.”
McLeer never gave much thought to her personal contrast. Both sewing and tackling filled her with joy, so she kept pursuing both.
McLeer attended Union County Vo-Tech High in Scotch Plains, but since the school did not offer football, she played for Dayton in her sending district. Her sophomore year, McLeer won a starting spot on the offensive line.
Team captains and seniors celebrated her achievement, she said.
Then came senior year, when everything changed.
Jonathan Dayton High School in Springfield, NJ on Sunday, December 8, 2024. Ed Murray| For NJ Advance Media‘The most embarrassing moment’
She could not believe her ears. Was this really happening?
McLeer had just been screamed at to “Get the (expletive) off the field!” by her defensive coordinator at Dayton High, seconds after getting substituted on by her head coach during a game in September 2024.
As McLeer recounted the story recently, her eyes began to well. She paused, then continued.
“It was the most embarrassing moment of my life,” she said.
According to McLeer, Dayton head coach Nick Iannacone subbed her in at defensive tackle during the matchup against South Hunterdon. But defensive coordinator Anthony Cioffi — who was hired months earlier by the school — was not ready for the change.
Cioffi shouted at her loud enough for fans sitting 30 yards away in the bleachers to hear, McLeer and her parents said.
Unsure of what to do, McLeer said she froze for about 10 seconds. Then, she trotted back off the field and to the sideline as she said yelling from Cioffi continued.
The defense played the next snap with 10 players on the field, McLeer and her parents said.
“I wish he had a reason why he pulled me out of the game,” McLeer said. “He didn’t. That made it 10 times worse.”
Cioffi declined comment when asked about McLeer’s allegations over two separate phone calls in November. Iannacone also did not respond to text messages left by NJ Advance Media seeking comment.
The tone was set for the rest of the season, McLeer and her parents claim.
“That specific play, I could just feel that everything was going to go downhill,” McLeer said. “And it did.”
Two games later against Roselle Park, McLeer, while playing on the offensive line, suffered a season-ending injuring when a defender fell on top of her, dislocating her shoulder and fracturing her humeral head.
A few weeks later, McLeer underwent surgery to fix a torn labrum.
As McLeer coped with the injury, harassment by her teammates continued, she said. Some made comments about her body, saying things “you wouldn’t want to hear about your daughter or family members,” McLeer said. McLeer declined to go into specifics about the comments.
Her teammates also questioned why she wanted to play football, McLeer said, and accused her of romantically pursuing them.
Some days, McLeer said, while her teammates changed in the field house next to the football field, McLeer walked through the school trying to find a place to change into her practice gear. When bathrooms were locked, she settled for a storage closet, McLeer said.
McLeer told her parents about the comments. They reported the allegations to athletic director Anthony Salerno, who elevated the concerns to Dayton principal Norman Francis and Goldberg, the superintendent.
Salerno and Goldberg did not respond to numerous emails seeking comment.
Goldberg, the superintendent, declined to comment about the possibility of an investigation and directed NJ Advance Media to district information regarding reporting issues and escalating concerns. Goldberg added that the district is “compliant with state and federal law.”
Two of the three boys who McLeer claimed made harassing comments never missed a snap. The other player left the team before the end of the season, but McLeer and her parents said they are not certain if it was the result of discipline from the school.
The McLeer family said they never felt like they received support from Dayton administrators.
“They were very dismissive about the whole situation,” said Danielle McLeer, Molly’s mother.
Until her senior year, McLeer said she had never faced any serious bullying or ill-will from teammates.
McLeer and her parents said changes to the coaching staff at Dayton helped create a toxic environment. In 2024, Iannacone brought on Cioffi, a former Dayton star who had a dazzling career at Rutgers University and played briefly in the NFL.
The sideline incident with Cioffi felt like a turning point, Danielle McLeer said.
“It really just proved to me and Dermot that he had no respect for her and now, the athletes thought it was okay to treat her like that,” Danielle McLeer said. “They clearly did treat her horribly. She played with these kids since the fourth grade and to not respect her was ridiculous.”
After her injury, McLeer tried to stay involved with the team, she said. She volunteered to drive teammates to weight lifting sessions — even with her arm in a sling.
But “the whole vibe felt different,” McLeer said.
Another low point came before her final home game, when McLeer said some teammates told her they did not want her on the field with them for their Senior Night celebration. When her teammates gathered at midfield, McLeer joined them anyway, causing some to shake their heads and glare, McLeer said.
McLeer thought about quitting. But she stuck it out through the final emotional weeks of the season, motivated by thoughts of her younger self and her dreams of becoming the first woman to play in the NFL.
She said the torment served as motivation. It made her even more emboldened to do the unthinkable: Play college football.
“The times I just wanted to quit, I was like, ‘Oh no! Not going to happen,” McLeer said. “I can’t let these people win.”
Molly McLeer prepares for a snap with her Mansfield team.Blaze Wood‘Sons and a daughter’
During a recruiting visit to Mansfield in the spring of 2024, a future teammate of McLeer’s asked Evans, the coach, if he could leave early to make sure he got home in time for prom.
“Of course, get out of here,” Evan told the recruit. “Make sure to send some pictures because I think of you as sons.”
Evans paused.
“And now, I have a daughter, too,” he added.
It’s that family atmosphere that has made Mansfield an ideal fit for McLeer.
“Coming into a program where not only are they already a family, but also willing to have a sister, not just a brother, is like nothing I had ever experienced before,” McLeer said.
When McLeer joined the team this summer, Mansfield brought in an identical locker with a name plate for McLeer and converted extra space next to the coach’s office into a female locker room. Her teammates added her to their group text chat, where they crack jokes and discuss plans.
“I know it sounds silly, but being added to a group chat about what they’re doing on the weekend means so much to me,” McLeer said.
Even though McLeer said she’s been accepted by the team, it took her time to earn their full respect as a player.
“I don’t want to say we were standoffish at first, but we wanted to make sure that she didn’t get hurt or anything like that,” said Evans, who retired after the 2025 season. “Then we realized she can hold her own.”
During one of her first practices in August, McLeer turned to her offensive line coach and told him to think of her like any other player.
“There’s no special treatment here,” Evans said. “She doesn’t want it. She said many times, ‘I don’t want anything special.’”
Mansfield finished the season with a 6-2 mark, setting a program record for wins. The team, which was founded in 2008, also made history when McLeer took the field this season.
Molly McLeer is a female football player who plays offensive line for Mansfield University’s sprint football team at her home in Bangor, NJ on Sunday, November 30, 2025Ed Murray| For NJ Advance Media
On that October day, with Mansfield leading 34-12 over St. Thomas Aquinas College, McLeer entered the game at tight end with just over six minutes left in the fourth quarter.
It was the culmination of months of hard work by McLeer, and the result of her navigating a challenging past year that saw her almost step away from the sport she loves.
Mansfield is now set to graduate two starters from the offensive line, meaning McLeer will compete for a starting role next season.
“She’s a hard worker and gives everything she has in practice,” Evans said. “No doubt in my mind that she’ll be out there as a starter at some point.”
If it happens, it will mark the first time a woman has played in a college football game as a starting offensive lineman.
Not that the distinction will matter much to McLeer. She doesn’t think of herself as a pioneer.
She’s just a Mansfield Mountaineer.