NEW PALESTINE — Jordan Reid doesn’t miss a New Palestine football game.
She’s right there in the student section every Friday, cheering on her classmates from the defending state champion and No. 1-ranked Class 5A football team.
Last week against Pendleton Heights, she got a little closer to the action.
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In fact, she was part of the action.
Due to an injury to one kicker and trying not to overuse another, coach Kyle Ralph went to Reid to see if she would like to kick for the Dragons.
“I was kind of, ‘Do I want to miss the student section or do I want to be on the field?’ I’ve been in the student section for three years, this is something not a lot of girls or a lot of people get a chance to do.
“I never thought in my life I’d be suiting up for the New Palestine Dragons or any football team, for that matter.”
As part of an advanced PE class last spring, teacher/coach Ralph brought his group out to the football field. Reid and some other classmates wanted to try to kick field goals. Ralph noticed that Reid was pretty good.
“It was one of those things that was kind of a joke at first,” Ralph said. “I told her you ought to try to kick, but we had a kicker so we were just joking around.”
Senior kicker Alex Kropp, who has handled kicking duties since he was a sophomore, was hurt in the offseason. He wasn’t healed in time to start the year, and then was reinjured.
Senior Eric Roudebush took over, but his plate of duties is on overflow. He’s been the No. 1 kicker since Kropp has been hurt, but he’s also the punter, starting wide receiver, and a backup at defensive back, linebacker and quarterback.
With Kropp out and Ralph wanting to take some of the load off Roudebush, he asked Reid about coming out for the team.
This fall, the class went back out to the field. He wanted to see Reid kick again.
“He said, he wanted to see what I could do, and he was actually being serious,” Reid said. “We joked about it some more and he said, ‘I’m serious.’
“Let’s just go for it. Let’s do it.”
Ralph talked with Reid’s parents to get their approval.
In high school football, it is illegal to hit the kicker, and on points-after-touchdowns, if the kick is blocked, the ball is dead and the play is over.
“That was one thing mom was super-concerned about and Jordan was a little bit concerned about it as well,” Ralph said. “The rules of the game protect you because you’re a kicker.”
“Mom was a little skeptical and scared,” Reid said. “Dad was all for it. I was going to do it, senior year, might as well.’”
It is likely no surprise to anyone that follows New Palestine athletics that Reid can do this and do it well.
Reid is a former soccer star for the Dragons and an all-around great athlete. She’s on the girls basketball team and will play at Indiana Wesleyan University after graduation. She’s been to the state track and field finals twice and was this spring’s Hancock County Girls Track Athlete of the Year.
Special teams coach Wes Anderson echoed Ralph’s thoughts on bringing in another kicker and wanting to take some of the workload off Roudebush.
“She’s a former soccer player. She really was a natural at it,” Anderson said. “She’s pretty good for someone that has kicked an oblong ball for three weeks.”
The moment of truth, though, was Friday against Pendleton Heights.
Once Reid agreed, she had to get her 10 practices in before being eligible to kick in a game.
She started practicing during Week 3, prior to the Dragons’ game against Yorktown. The game against the Arabians was the first one she was able to kick in.
Since it was her first game, Ralph wasn’t ready to use her a big pressure situation. He told her if they were able to get a comfortable lead, she would get in the game.
The game was pretty tight at halftime. The Dragons had a slim 14-6 lead, but in the second half it was all New Pal.
When the Dragons scored at the end of the third quarter, they led 40-6. It was time to send Reid in to kick the PAT.
“As soon as they called my name that I was going to kick next, I started to freak out,” Reid said. “I talked to some of the guys and they kept telling me, ‘You’ve got this. It’s just like practice.’
“It was super loud, I don’t know how anybody hears anybody out there. It was so loud, a different atmosphere than anything I’ve ever been in. I just blocked it out. My adrenaline was through the roof, I just kind of went for it and it went in. The second one, not so much, but we’re getting there.”
She nailed the PAT with plenty to spare. Ralph called it “a rocket,” that “would have been good from 40-plus (yards).”
It was the first time a female player had ever scored a point for New Palestine in a football game. It is believed to be only the second time it has been done in Hancock County. Mt. Vernon’s Blaire Viehweg kicked three PATs for the Marauders in 2015.
Reid said, initially, she hadn’t thought much of the magnitude of being a female participating in a predominantly male sport, but people have brought it up to her.
She had thought about it as just being fun, a cool thing to do her senior year, and help her friends and classmates on the football team.
“A lot of people were saying I was encouraging little girls around the community, and that really hit me,” she said. “I thought I was just doing this for fun. Maybe I am changing the way for sports in general and that it’s not just a girls sport or guys sport. It didn’t mean much at the time, but now that everything is kind of settling in, I’m getting a lot of feedback. This is something great.”
Reid is getting better each practice, too. At Wednesday’s PAT and field goal practice, she was showing that she has the potential to be a consistent kicker.
She’s becoming more comfortable and confident. She joked that she’s getting better at putting on her football pads on, correctly. And, she is no longer bothered by ‘helmet hair.’
Reid said the coaches and players have been supportive, and she is grateful to have this opportunity.
“If you put your mind to it, you can do it,” she said. “It doesn’t matter your gender.
“When the opportunity presents itself, you have to take a leap of faith and trust the people around you. It shows that anything is possible. You can come out here and see a girl kick. Your dreams can happen.”
