By Kim J. Harmon

 

Antonio Militano has always been a little bit unconventional in her quest to challenge herself athletically.

After she became the first female wrestler in the history of Newtown High School (1992-93), after she skated with the women’s ice hockey team and played rugby at Rochester Polytechnic Institute, and after she took up kickboxing while studying abroad no one should be all that surprised that she is now playing professional football.

That’s right – Antonio Militano is starting strong safety and starting tailback for the New York Dazzles of the Women’s Professional Football League (WPFL).

The WPFL is the original and longest-operating women’s pro football league in the United States. With teams across the United States, the WPFL had its first game in 1999 with three original teams – the Houston Energy, Austin Rage, and the New England Storm.

Currently the league has 15 teams with several teams in the process of licensing for 2005.

Efforts to put together a women’s tackle football league date back as far as the 1960s and gained some notoriety with the Oklahoma City Dolls of the National Women’s Football League (NWFL) back in the 1970s.

Antonio answered the call when the expansion Dazzles began to put their team together back in April. The idea of playing football had never entered her mind and, in fact, all she knew about the sport was gleaned from whatever football players she had dated in her life. Still, a friend of her sister immediately thought of Antonia when tryouts were first announced and dashed off an email – “Hey, this is right up your alley.”

Antonia was intrigued.

“My mind started working,” she said. “I thought, ‘hey, I could be a professional athlete.’ ”

Tryouts were at Columbia University and Antonia, now living in Manhattan, had been at field hockey practice in the Bronx and found it exceedingly difficult to find a reputable cabbie and get herself out there on time. By the time she got to the campus, all the other players had already tried out and the coaching staff – Greg Murphy (former linebacker and defensive end for several NFL teams, including the New York Giants and New York Jets), Greg Buttle (former linebacker for the New York Jets) and Cuncho Brown (former tight end for the New Orleans Saints), all graduates of Penn State – was able to focus all its attention on her as she ran the sprints and ran through the drills.

“I didn’t know what they were looking for,” said Antonia, “so I tried to play all the bases. When we were done I took off my shirt so all I had on was my sports bra. I flexed my muscles and shook out my hair and I said, ‘See – I’m not only an asset to you as a football player, I’m also beautiful.’ ”

On April 30, she was told she had made the team. Like the rest of the team, Antonia signed a contract with the Dazzles for one dollar, with the idea that the players would divide up the gate receipts. In actually, the Dazzles are taking those proceeds and re-directing them to three non-profit agencies in New York.

Now, the Dazzles have suffered through the pains that most expansion teams – whatever the sport – have suffered through in their infancies. For the Dazzles, though, it has been particularly rough; they have lost their first five games by a combined 209-0.

“We’re the new team and everyone else has experience,” said Antonia, “but no one is getting discouraged. We have lots of family and friends of friends coming to the game and they are really excited to see us out there because we have heart and we try hard.”

A Lot Of Heart

Diagnosed with a heart murmur when she was young, Antonia was discouraged from participating in sports. But when she was 10 – and after the Militano family had moved to New York and then back to Newtown – she had outgrown the murmur and was ready to play.

At first, it was softball under the tutelage of Mark Fries and Jim Stiewing. But when she was 12, Antonia found out about a field hockey camp being held at Sandy Hook School and while she can scarcely remember now what possessed her to go, it was serendipity that she did.

Her freshman year in high school passed and she did was play junior varsity softball, but in the fall of 1992 she tried out for – and made – the field hockey team. That began her affair with the sport that continues to this day, in an adult league at Dewitt Clinton High School in the Bronx.

At Newtown High, Antonia was lucky enough to begin working with the varsity and playing alongside such athletes as Sara Patrick (now Sara Strait, former head coach of the Newtown High School girls’ lacrosse team) and Mary Kate Schneider.

“That’s how I thrive,” said Antonia, “by practicing with people who are better than me. I had a good time playing with them and the next year was awesome.”

That winter, Antonia – averse to things like swimming (“I tried it,” she said, “and thought I was horrible at it.”) and volleyball – decided to try something different: wrestling. It was only junior varsity, but she was the first female to wrestle at Newtown High School.

“No one thought I would do it,” she recalled. “But I really wanted to be a three-season athlete and I hated not playing something.”

Although she enjoyed the experience, she was not as committed to it as others were, especially when it came to the extremes of such things as making weight. Still, she wrestled in four matches that one season (even though one was a forfeit).

And how is this for chance? Antonia recently met a guy who was visiting New York from Colorado and discovered that, yep, he was one of those kids she had grappled with 10 years ago. Come one, what are the odds?

In the spring of her junior year, the Newtown High School girls’ lacrosse team was in a desperate search for a goaltender and Antonia gladly took the call – but after spending a season throwing her body all over the cage developing bruises that seemed like new appendages, she decided to forgo further punishment.

When it came time to move on to college, Antonia applied to some 20 schools and had her eyes on those that offered a sports outlet. She settled on Rochester Polytechnic Institute in New York, where she not only majored in management technology (with a concentration in management information and financial information systems) but also played field hockey, ice hockey, and took up kickboxing.

The field hockey was a natural extension to her career. It also resulted with Antonia being named RPI’s Most Valuable Player in the fall of 1999 and then being presented with the Henry Kumpf Award (presented to the athlete who has given the most to his or her sport).

When it came to ice hockey, Antonia saw that the program was shifting from club status to varsity and realized she had an opportunity to move right onto a varsity team … even though she had never skated before.

She spent a couple of semesters playing rugby at RPI (“It seems like rugby is a lot cleaner than football,” she said, “but sometimes you do have to fend for yourself in certain situations.”) and while spending a semester studying in Milan, Italy, she took up kickboxing (“the only sports for women were volleyball and soccer,” she said, “and I wasn’t about to do that.”)

After graduating from RPI in April of 2000, she got a job with AT&T in Manhattan and was there for a little over a year before leaving in August of 2001. The next several months were tough on lots of Americans, even more so for the Militano family, which lost a loved one – firefighter Joseph Mascali, believed to be rescuing people at Cantor Fitzgerald – in the attack on the World Trade Center.

“The family was traumatized that year,” Antonia said. “They were just starting to get through the grieving when his body was found in February (of 2002). We had the memorial service in October, but the funeral in March. It was hard.”

Eventually she moved past it, but it also made her reconsider what she wanted out of life. With the job market squeezed, Antonia served as a campaign finance assistant for Eliott Spitzer and currently is a per diem substitute for the New York City Department of Education.

“The only offers I was getting were sales offers,” she said. “I’m young, I’m stupid, and I should just take whatever opportunity I could get and spin it to my advantage, but I didn’t want to do that.”

So she continued to pursue athletics and – at the same time – began thinking about getting more involved in public relations and sports marketing. The field was not unknown to her, since she served an internship with the Hartford Whalers back when she was a senior at Newtown High School.

That is, in part, why the opportunity presented by Dr Neil Scheier, owner of the New York Dazzles, intrigued her so much. It was not only playing football that appealed to her, but also helping market a new women’s football team.

“We’re fortunate to have the owner we have,” said Antonia. “I can’t stress how much he has done for us. He sees us progressing and believes in us.”

But progressing or not, recruiting will be a major concern of the Dazzles, as the team has discovered what it is like to have a slew of injuries and just barely enough bodies to carry on. The Dazzles lost a couple of quarterbacks to injury and Antonia herself broke the arm of a teammate after the two converged on a tackle.

Sure there have been problems, but Antonia loves it. And last Saturday, she had her best game against the Houston Energy – rushing for 30 yards (including a 17-yard gallop) and coming up with eight tackles (one of those forcing a turnover) and a fumble recovery.

“I really love the coaching staff and I like the girls I’m playing with,” she said. “I would not be out there sacrificing my body if I didn’t.”

It is still a work in progress for Antonia (“I can’t wait until I get to that point where it’s all instinct,” she said, “and just getting confident with it. That’s the thing.”), but she has always been aggressive and always been fearless and a couple of bruises here and there are not going to stop her from being the best football player – the best professional – she can be.

NOTE: All New York Dazzles home games are broadcast on Telecare 29 on Cablevisiion and all games are broadcast live on WNYG AM 1440.