Laura Cantrell figured there was only one way to truly understand and appreciate her husband’s passion for football. 

 

“So my husband coaches football, and I was watching him do some off-season game planning in 2024,” said Cantrell, who teaches art at Troy Junior High School. “And I told him, ‘I would understand this a lot more if I felt like I could learn it from the inside out.’" 

 

Cantrell thought the only way to understand football was to play football – which is kind of like deciding to strap yourself to a rocket ship and blast off into the heavens because your spouse loves astronomy. 

Still, though, Cantrell didn’t really think she’d ever have much of an opportunity to learn from “from the inside out,” because truthfully, how many opportunities are there for grown women to play full-contact football? 

 

Turns out there were more than she ever would have guessed … including one pretty close to home. Her husband, Charles Cantrell – who has coached football at every level from little league to high school – helped her research her options.

 

“From there, we really just fell down the rabbit hole of women's football,” Mrs. Cantrell said. “He told me women's football is a thing, and so we found a couple of teams in Ohio. We started following the Cincinnati Cougars in 2024, and it was awesome because we went to all their home games, and they went to the playoffs, and then they also went to the championship game. So we ended up watching them at their championship game in Canton at Fawcett Stadium. And we made it part of our vacation that year, and it was just really inspiring to see these women when they were unranked at the beginning of the season, and they won the D3 championship. So we continued to follow them last year.”

 

That’s around the same time Cantrell decided maybe it was time to stop dreaming and start playing. 

 

Still, though, at the time she was still an art teacher who knew more about Banksy than Brady, was an expert in Monet but not Mahomes, and wasn’t sure she was ready to trade her pastel chalk for pancake blocks. 

 

So Cantrell did exactly what she encourages her students to do when they want to get better at something.

 

She went to work. 

 

“That summer, when they won, that was the first time I got a gym membership and just started working out. And my husband showed me how to lift heavy things, and so then, fast forward a year, I was really prepping,” Cantrell said. “I knew when my son was going to be a junior, I wouldn't have to be the mom taxi. And so I'd have the free time to be able to go back and forth to practices. I really just kind of cleared up my life, got myself in shape to do it. Mick Roberts actually helped me in the off-season, starting in October, and he's been helping me work out.”

 

Roberts, a former Troy Junior High School teacher and the former strength and conditioning coach at Troy High School for decades, put Cantrell through some of his legendary “Mick Roberts workouts,” after about six months of intense training, Cantrell knew she was ready for the gridiron. 

 

Earlier this spring, Cantrell made her debut as the starting right guard for the Cincinnati Cougars. She’s not just playing football, but she’s in the trenches, where every single play results in her getting hit and, when done right, hitting her opponents even harder. 

 

It’s been a stunning transformation for a junior high school art teacher who had, at best, a passing interest in the sports just a few years ago. Now that she’s a player, she is all in on the sport.

 

“Very casual,” Cantrell said of her interest in the game before becoming a player. “I guess you could say I was kind of a Colts fan by birth because I was born in Indianapolis, but very loosely followed. Not one who can tell you a whole lot of football players' names or anything like that. It's just one of those things you casually follow in the background. I watched all the Super Bowls and that kind of stuff. My husband is a diehard Browns fan, so I have been to a couple of NFL training day things and family days. And that's really just to be a nice wife and to go along with him, but it was minimally interesting to me until now. Now I have completely fallen down the rabbit hole. I totally drank the Kool-Aid.”

 

So far, the support Cantrell has received from both her fellow staff members and her students has been tremendous, she said. Before her first game, many of the TJHS staff members wore Cincinnati Cougars t-shirts to show their support. The male staff members who are or were football players and/or coaches routinely ask her for updates. Becoming a player has also allowed her to form a new kind of bond with her students who play football.

 

“That staff has been hugely supportive here,” he said. “As soon as I told Ben Merket, ‘This is the goal,’ a couple of years ago, he would check in all the time and be like, ‘How’s it going? How’s the football going?’ How’s the training going?’ And so especially this year, since the ball actually got rolling and I started going to practice and stuff, Jeff Olden will ask me questions. And Brad Rohlfs will see me in the hallway and ask, ‘How’s your pass pro?’ And they say things that would have been completely like Swahili to me two years ago, but now I get it.

 

“It has been a really fun way to bond with my football players as students. They’re the ones that check in on me. Even the ones I had first semester will come in and ask how things are going. They’ll ask, ‘How did your game go?’ And some of them follow on social media and they’ll tell me, ‘Good win’ in the hallway.” 

 

Of course, there is one staff member in the district who has taken an especially keen interest in Cantrell’s development. Remarkably, Cantrell is not the first female teacher in district history to play football. In the early 2000s, Troy High School Spanish teacher Susan Clark played football in Columbus. 

 

“So I can't remember exactly what year she played,” Cantrell said. “But we crossed paths doing the Battelle for Kids stuff. And one of the little breakout sessions, we were supposed to be with people of our own discipline. So basically, all of the others were grouped together, art and Spanish. And she said her name. I was like, "Time out." "Did you play football?" And she goes, "I did." And I said, "We need to chat. So we have emailed a couple of times since I’ve started this whole adventure. I definitely don’t want to be credited as the first female teacher in Troy history to play football. And her story is really cool, too, because I know it was a thing that helped her get through some really hard times.” 

 

For Cantrell, who turned 40 earlier this year, her transformation hasn’t been just physical. It’s also been an emotional – and some might even argue spiritual – journey for her. She said she’s found something deep inside her she didn’t really know existed before she started playing football.

 

“There's something that happens when you get to a certain age as a woman that you find this – there's no better word for it – rage,” she said. “That wasn't there before. And I know that makes me sound like a wild animal, that I'm not going to go off on my kids or anything. But I needed an outlet. And I think I got to a point in my life where nothing has changed in so long. I mean, I got married 20 years ago. My son, my baby, is 17. And I've had the same job since he was born for 17 years. So not a whole lot has changed. I mean, there's been a lot of events that have happened along the way. But those big core things.

 

“I remember when I was thinking about doing this, back in 2024, they had made some random Facebook posts, and it had some statistic about how many female athletes are over the age of 40. Our quarterback is 45. So I just saw myself in it. And it was not something I'd ever imagined for myself before, but like I said, there were people who are my age, who look like me. And it's a big-girl sport. So many times, I think people think athletic women look a certain way and they fit a certain mold. Well, these athletic women, rugby players, too, they don't have to fit into that same mold, and we can do big-girl things, big-girl jobs. And it's been a big-- it's been very empowering for me.”

 

Ultimately, though, Cantrell’s football career began as a way to share more of her husband’s passion for football. That, too, has worked out better than she could have possibly imagined. 

 

Not only are they sharing their love of the game, they are now sharing the same sideline. Charles Cantrell – affectionately known as “Coach Chuck” to his players – is the Cincinnati Cougars’ offensive coordinator.

 

“So he has coached at Covington, Vandalia and Bradford,” Cantrell said. “But then he left Bradford this year, which was serendipitous because that freed him up. We had a coach who quit in February. And I asked my head coach, I said, ‘Do you want the number of a guy who knows our entire playbook?’ And he's like, ‘Oh my gosh, your husband.’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ And so by the time I got home from practice that day, he was hired. And now he is our offensive coordinator.

 

“He's a good people person. I mean, he has coached little league through high school, and I think he knows how to read his audience and meet us there. And he will tell you, it's an interesting situation to be coaching not only just coaching women, but women who are full adults who have jobs. Now, as far as me personally, that's not weird because he's practically been coaching me ever since I said I want to play football. But it's been weird about the dynamics of having the coach as your husband. You do something right. You don't want it to just – you want to be known for doing something right and not just for being the coach's wife.”

 

Laura Cantrell went looking for a way to understand football and found something better: a new version of herself, a deeper bond with her husband, and proof that dreams don’t have an expiration date.

 

“