Liz Heaston
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Elizabeth Heaston Thompson (born 1977) is an American athlete who is the first woman ever to score in a college football game. She accomplished this feat on October 18, 1997 as a placekicker for the Willamette Bearcats football team of Willamette University, which then competed in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) for small colleges.[1] She also played women's soccer for Willamette as a defender.[2] Heaston's accomplishment was widely noted by the media and the sports community.
Life
Heaston was raised in Richland, Washington.[3][4] After graduating she enrolled at Willamette University, where she became a star soccer player, earning All-American honorable mention in 1996 and 1997.[5] In 1997 she joined the football team as a backup placekicker. She became the first woman to play and score points in a college football game during a match between Willamette and Linfield College on October 18, 1997. The 5-foot-5-inch, 120-pound soccer player entered the game as a replacement kicker for Willamette and kicked two extra points as her team won 27-0.[5] The accomplishment resulted in interviews with The Today Show and CBS This Morning.[6]
Heaston's football career lasted two games; she made two of four extra point attempts.[7][8] Her jersey hangs on display at the College Football Hall of Fame.[9]
The following year Heaston played only soccer at Willamette, and graduated with a biology degree in 1999.[5] She attended graduate school at Pacific University where she earned a doctorate in optometry and met her husband Trent Thompson.[5] She has one daughter, Isabella, and a son and lives and works in her hometown of Richland, Washington, where she works at her father's optometry office along with her husband.[5]
See also
- 1997 Linfield vs. Willamette football game
- Tonya Butler, the first female to score a field goal in an NCAA game
- Sarah Fuller, the first woman to score in a Power Five conferences football game
- Katie Hnida, the first woman to score in a Division I-A game
- Ashley Martin, the first female to score in an NCAA game, and the first to score in a Division I game
- Haley Van Voorhis, the first female to play a non-kicking position in an NCAA game at any level
- List of female American football players
References
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- 1977 births
- Living people
- American football placekickers
- American women's soccer players
- Women's association football defenders
- Female players of American football
- 20th-century American sportswomen
- Sportspeople from Richland, Washington
- Pacific University alumni
- Willamette Bearcats football players
- 21st-century American women
- Willamette Bearcats women's soccer players