Hail Mary: The Rise and Fall of the National Women's Football League. This item is unavailable.Hail Mary: The Rise and Fall of the National Women's Football League

The groundbreaking story of the National Women's Football League, and the players whose spirit, rivalries, and tenacity changed the legacy of women's sports forever.

In 1967, a Cleveland promoter recruited a group of women to compete as a traveling football troupe. It was conceived as a gimmick--in the vein of the Harlem Globetrotters--but the women who signed up really wanted to play. And they were determined to win.

Hail Mary chronicles the highs and lows of the National Women's Football League, which took root in nineteen cities across the US over the course of two decades. Drawing on new interviews with former players from the Detroit Demons, the Toledo Troopers, the LA Dandelions, and more, Hail Mary brings us into the stadiums where they broke records, the small-town lesbian bars where they were recruited, and the backrooms where the league was formed, championed, and eventually shuttered. In an era of vibrant second wave feminism and Title IX activism, the athletes of the National Women's Football League were boisterous pioneers on and off the field: you'll be rooting for them from start to finish.

Lyndsey D'Arcangelo writes about women's college basketball and the WNBA for The Athletic. Her articles, columns and profiles on female/LGBTQ+ athletes have previously appeared in The Ringer, Deadspin, espnW/ESPN, Teen Vogue, The Buffalo News, The Huffington Post, NBC OUT and more. She received a Notable Mention in the 2018 Best American Sports Writing anthology for her story, "My Father, Trump and The Buffalo Bills." Lyndsey lives in Buffalo, NY.
Frankie de la Cretaz is a freelance writer who focuses on the intersection of sports and gender. They are the former sports columnist for Longreads and for Bitch Media. Their work has appeared in the New York Times, Rolling Stone, espnW, Vogue, The Washington Post, Teen Vogue, The Ringer, Bleacher Report, The Atlantic, and more. Their work on racism in Boston sports media received the 2017 Nellie Bly Award for Investigative Journalism from the Transformative Culture Project, and that story was also a Notable Story in the 2018 Best American Sports Writing. Their writing on the queer history of women's baseball for Narratively was nominated for a prestigious baseball writing award, the 2019 SABR Analytics Research Award. They live in the Boston area.