MHS Alum, Elizabeth Okey, Football World Cup Champion!
Elizabeth Okey, women's football 2013 World Cup champion.
2013 has been a banner year for women’s sports in Manchester. Not only did the Lady Dutch basketball team became Class C state champions but the Lady Dutch soccer team won both Conference and District championships this spring, in their first season of varsity play. In addition, a former Manchester athlete did our community proud this summer as she assisted the women’s TEAM USA to a women’s football world cup championship. As if that wasn’t enough, she returned home and a month later she and her local professional team won the national championship--all in the same summer!
Yes, football. Yes, women’s tackle football. And yes, a 2013 world champion and gold medalist.
Liz Okey, daughter of Manchester residents Monty and JoAnn Okey, and a 2003 graduate of Manchester High School, is a proud member of the World Cup champions, TEAM USA, as well as the National Champions, Chicago Force women’s football team.
“Like many kids, I grew up loving to watch the Olympics; to see the athletes’ pride in representing their country at the highest level,” says Liz. “I would’ve never imagined myself in their shoes. I remember watching Holly Horodeczny play on the varsity team at Manchester High School, thinking that was one of the coolest things.”
And although it “just felt right” to her to see a girl playing football in high school, it didn’t happen for Liz for several more years.
“The first time I ever played any form of football was a flag football game my senior year (at Kalamazoo) College,” Liz recalls. “I was the leader of a student organization, who put it on as a spring activity. I’d never experienced such an intense competitive drive playing other sports, until then.”
A year later, after moving to Chicago, she was leading after-school programs for girls when she learned about the Chicago Force, one of fifty nationwide professional teams in the Women’s Football Alliance (WFA). She went to a game and then to the national championship game that was held in Chicago that year. She was enthralled. Liz said, “I contacted the owner right away and began training for tryouts. I made the team, and have never looked back!”
Liz had played a lot of competitive sports, including volleyball and basketball from middle school on up, but she found football was like no other. She says, “My coach, John Konecki, says that football is the only sport that rewards you solely based on effort. I’ve always been an extremely hard-working athlete, but never was able to find my niche. Football was the turning point.”
Liz’s first season of play with the Force was spring 2009, and she witnessed several of her teammates and coaches compete in the first world championship during the summer of 2010. When tryouts for the 2013 Team USA rolled around, and with it, an opportunity to compete in the World Cup Championship herself, she knew she would regret not giving it a try.
But there was a complication; she’d broken her fibula playing football in April 2012. “I had surgery and had 17 pieces of metal put in my left leg,” Liz remembers. “ To recover from such a serious injury is hard on its own, but to recover and train to try out for a national team in 9 months was even more difficult.”
The struggles of overcoming an injury just made her more determined to try. Intense physical therapy from June- September of 2012 helped her heal enough to start training with her teammates just six months after her injury.
Trials were held in January 2013 in Austin, TX with nearly 300 women trying out for 45 team spots. Eight of those women tried out for center, the same position that Liz was vying for. When Team USA was announced in February, Liz and eight of her Chicago Force teammates were on the roster.
The format and rules of the women’s football league are the same as NCAA and NFL, Liz says. “The only difference between us and the boys: the football is slightly smaller. Literally everything else is the same.”
Although she had already been playing professionally for four years with the high-powered Chicago Force, Liz expressed that it is difficult for her to put into words the experience of playing for a national football team.
“The best athletes in the United States are extremely talented and could come together with a lot of ego and bravado, but that was not the case,” she says. Instead, she stated, everyone was supportive, open-minded, and focused on succeeding together.
And succeed they did. In the World Cup Championships, held in Vantaa, Finland June 28-July 6, only one team—Germany—ever even scored at all against Team USA, who ended up winning the final round game against Canada with a score of 64-0. Not only did TEAM USA win gold, but also broke multiple records for a national football team of any age or gender in international competition.
When Liz thinks about all she’s accomplished this summer, not only being a pioneer in the sport, but representing our country, winning a gold medal and breaking records, Liz says, it “is amazing and crazy all at the same time!”
With incredible support from her Manchester family and friends, her college classmates, and her adopted hometown of Chicago, Liz didn’t rest on her laurels for long. She also helped lead the Force to a winning season this summer, concluding on Aug. 3 with a national championship.
Keep those championships coming, Lady Dutch!
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