These Divas deliver hits

For 15 years the District’s football fans have longed for a championship-caliber team.

Joe Gibbs retired a year after guiding the Washington Redskins to Super Bowl glory in 1992, then the team plunged into the dregs of the NFL. Gibbs returned to the sidelines three seasons ago, but nothing has changed.

Meanwhile, another D.C. football team wearing burgundy and gold and operating in obscurity has posted three consecutive 8-0 regular seasons — the last of which was capped by a championship.

But none of the players on this team reside in multimillion dollar homes. In this league, there are no agents, no contracts, no unions, no huge endorsements — and no men.

Unlike their NFL counterparts, the members of the D.C. Divas — the District’s full-contact women’s football team, which opens its seventh season Saturday at 7 p.m. at Prince George’s Sports and Learning Complex — can’t support themselves playing football.

So the women juggle the sport with full-time jobs. They’re nurses, police officers, government workers, court liaisons, teachers and chefs.

Somehow they toggle between everyday responsibilities and life on the gridiron to achieve their dreams of playing a sport that for many years had no place for them.

“It requires sacrifice, but it’s worth it. It’s a stress reliever for me,” says defensive lineman Trigger McNair, who joined the Divas (her third team in eight seasons) last season after moving from Florida. The 30-year-old Bronx native works 16-hour shifts as a correctional officer at the D.C. Jail. Many nights she leaves work, attends a three- to four-hour practice, goes home, showers, eats and goes back to work.

Quarterback Allyson Hamlin once had to answer the call of duty while at practice one evening when her workday should have been over. That day, three years ago, she became the first Prince George’s County officer to make an arrest in shoulder pads.

The Divas were practicing at the Upper Marlboro Boys & Girls Club when Hamlin and her teammates heard what sounded like a car accident. They ran to the nearby intersection to find a man who had been thrown from his motorcycle in a hit-and-run accident. As the players tended to the victim and waited for rescue workers, someone noticed the white Mercedes Benz that struck the man circle past and speed off.

Hamlin jumped in her cruiser and pursued the car, which was being driven by an intoxicated woman.

“I got her boxed in on 450 and called for backup,” Hamlin says with a grin. “Then I realized I didn’t have my gun — it was in my trunk — and that I was still in pads. I had to call on the radio to let everyone know I had football pads on so they’d know not to gun me. I jumped out, got my gun and was standing in the road, holding my gun on this woman. A lot of cops still give me a hard time about it to this day.”

Hamlin made the arrest, waited for a fellow officer to take the woman into custody and then returned to practice.

While the players admit attending three practices and a game every week becomes taxing, they say the obstacles are well worth the reward.

“I love that I have the chance to play a sport I grew up loving and proving people wrong when they said, ‘You can’t do this. You’re a girl,’ ” says Donna Wilkinson, who ran for 1,267 yards four seasons ago, becoming the first woman to rush for 1,000 yards. “When they hear, most guys wanna date me or say, ‘You can hit me anytime.’ They can’t believe a woman can be beautiful and strong and intelligent but can kick some [butt] on the field, too.”

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