A football jersey, cleats, and a helmet. Would you suspect a girl underneath all of that? You would if you knew Maria “Izzy” Capellan: senior, girls soccer star and kicker for the South High School football team since her sophomore year. Her coach had mentioned they had needed a kicker during her freshman year; she jokingly suggested to kick for the team and just a year later her coach asked her if she was serious about kicking for the team.

“My sophomore year, I got a text from my coach, and he was like, ‘So are you serious about kicking?’ And I was like, I mean, I’ll try,” said Capellan.

Capellan says that playing football with the boys is just like playing any other regular sport, although with boys only seems scary because boys tend to play rougher and more physically.

“I’ve played with boys before,” said Capellan. “It is kind of scary because people are running at each other, and sometimes I am scared to get hit, but I have more fun than anything,” she said.

She is one of two kickers on the team; she considers her performance is relevantly good in comparison to the other boys on the team.

“I feel like everyone just goes out there and does what they need too to help the team,” she said.

She trains every day with a routine that revolves around football practice and weight training—It is the very definition of eat, sleep, wake up, repeat. Since she does not take any breaks from the three sports she plays, her schedule.

“Straight from one practice for one sport to another practice for a different sport, then home, eat, shower, go to sleep, or do homework,” said Capellan. “All I do is work, sleep, eat, workout, practice, and go to school.”

She typically kicks at every game, but she hasn’t played much since she has been injured.

“I’ve been hurt for like two weeks now. So, I haven’t been able to kick; the last JV game we had, I was not able to kick at all, but as long as we do score, I pretty much kick everything,” she said.

During her sophomore and junior year, she struggled the most with health issues and an eating disorder.

“It was worse sophomore year, but it’s gotten better slowly,” she said

During this time, her biggest support system was her peers, and especially her family.

“Since the day I was born, my mom has always pushed me to try and be better,” said Capellan. “My family reminds me, like who I am, to stay true to myself and to just keep doing what I’m doing, not to give up.”