**For video of First Dude exercise rider Tammy Fox discussing her pro football career, please visit: http://www.belmontstakes.com/multimedia/features/2010/6/4/tammy-fox-exercise-rider-%E2%80%A6.-football-player/ **
Friday, June 4, 2010
Contact: Jenny Kellner
FOX A NATURAL ON RACETRACK … AND GRIDIRON
But playing professional NFL-style football?
“Yes, I did play for a women’s football league for one season,” said Fox, the former jockey who is now the exercise rider for First Dude, who is running in Saturday’s Grade 1, $1 million Belmont Stakes at
Back in 2005, Fox, who had frequently played sandlot football with other jockeys after the races in
“So I called Dale [First Dude’s trainer Dale Romans] and told him I was going to try out for this women’s football team. He said, ‘You’re crazy.’ So that Saturday, I went out to the field and there were probably 50 women out there, trying out. I signed the papers, and everyone is looking at me going ‘Who’s this little thing?’ But, I made the team.
“And, I made a couple of touchdowns.”
Tee Banks, a Karma offensive lineman and the team’s player representative, says Fox was a great football player.
“Very agile, very quick,” said Banks. “She would get behind the line and you couldn’t even see her. So, her size was an advantage, at least until some big player fell on her.”
Fox, who Louisville Courier-Journal sportswriter Jennie Rees once called “pound-for-pound, the toughest person on the backstretch,” says playing tackle football was a lot tougher than riding racehorses.
“I got hit, knocked down … I mean, it was tough, just like NFL rules,” said Fox, 45. “Those girls were big, and strong. They didn’t hold any punches.
“There were 60 girls on the team, which was called the Kentucky Karma. We traveled to
Although she says she enjoyed the competition, the three-day-a-week practices, which often ran late, and the travel were hard on Romans and the couple’s two children, who were still in grade school.
“So after one season, it was time to stop,” she said. “But it was fun.”
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