Coahulla Creek High football's female lineman Destiny Bassett earns spot
Oct. 14—VARNELL — In the redesigned football locker room attached to the football stadium at Coahulla Creek High School, you'll find navy blue horseshoe logos backing the lockers and guarding doorways.
Posters emblazoned with the faces of the members of the senior class who are pursuing a historic season at Coahulla Creek dot one side of the wall along a hallway connecting the players' area to the coaches' offices, and players can let devices recharge while they do too at the smartphone power stations set up along the opposite wall.
If you follow that hallway toward the exit of the building, in an open room that houses the freshly-cleaned uniforms of the Colts before a Friday night battle, there's a door that once led to and will someday again lead to a laundry closet.
Below the affixed door label identifying the room's intended purpose there is a less-permanent addition.
"Knock before entering," is stated, put there by a marker on a segment of white tape.
On those Friday nights, if you knock first, you'll find a Coahulla Creek junior lineman sitting in a locker, ready to join teammates from the other room out on the field and in the trenches.
Destiny Bassett is an offensive and defensive lineman for a Coahulla Creek team that has already made history this season and will most likely continue to do so. The Colts are 5-2. They've already set a new school record with that fifth victory, and, after an open date tonight, Coahulla Creek will try for its sixth win in a home game against Bremen on Friday, Oct. 21.
In many ways Bassett is just like the other Colts, hoping for and working toward what would be a history-making first football playoff appearance for the school. Bassett will go nose-to-nose with any opposing lineman in Region 6-3A to help the team pave running room for back Payton Gordon or create time for standout quarterback Kace Kinnamon to fire the ball downfield.
Bassett is just another part of the team.
She also happens to be a girl.
"It's just been a big journey," Bassett said. "It's a hard sport, but the more you play, you get used to it."
Bassett is indeed used to the grind of football. She's used to the looks of shock on her opponents' faces or the taunts of derision once they find out they're lining up across from a female lineman.
She's been at it since playing rec league in first grade during her days at Cohutta Elementary School. She played on the junior varsity team for Coahulla Creek for the last two years, and she finally got her shot on the main squad as a junior this season.
Wearing No. 56 and standing a little shorter than some of her other teammates on the offensive line at 5-foot-6-inches, Bassett made her first start in varsity football in a Sept. 8 game against Chattooga. Bassett, playing at right guard, and the other offensive linemen helped make room for Gordon to rush for 103 yards and three touchdowns.
On her first play from scrimmage, she was knocked down by a Chattooga defensive lineman. But she got back up and helped the Colts to a 35-0 win.
"The biggest thing is she's just the same as everybody else. She doesn't get any special treatment," Coahulla Creek head coach Danny Wilson said. "She's not playing a position that is easy on anybody. Offensive line is tough, and the weight room is tough. She's not one time asked for any kind of special treatment. She goes through everything that our guys go through, and she never complains."
Bassett's gotten regular playing time since that first game, except for a missed game due to a minor injury.
She's earned her spot on the team and the playing time she's gotten so far, Wilson said. and her teammates certainly don't deny it.
"She's just a part of the team. They look out for her. I think everyone on the team would fight for her, because she's earned that respect," Wilson said. "They may have taken it easy on her a little in practice early, but they realized quickly that she was for real."
Coahulla Creek senior offensive and defensive lineman Hudson Mardis remembers those early practices. He also remembers just how quickly he and his teammates noticed Bassett was just as at home on the practice field as any of the other Colts.
"Since the first day I saw her at practice, you just knew that she meant business," Mardis said. "She came in and immediately you could tell she took things very seriously. We all learned that about her."
"All my teammates are like my family," Bassett said. "They kind of treat me like their sister. They have my back, and they encourage me to fix my mistakes and tell me when I do well."
That respect and protectiveness was quickly earned, said Mardis.
"She could be hurt, but she'll be in there first in the weight room with the rest of us," he said. "She never takes even a rep off. She's just a hard-working girl. If they need a body, she's the first person to jump in. She never says no and never backs down. She's always ready to go."
Mardis didn't get to play with Bassett until she came out for football on the varsity team, but her work ethic that led her to a spot on the high school team began long before.
Bassett remembers deciding to push for playing football while watching her older brother play.
"When I first saw my brother tackle somebody, I was like 'That's cool, and I want to do it,'" Bassett smiled. "When I first played, I just immediately fell in love with it. I tried every position, and defensive line was my favorite."
She played in recreational leagues from first grade at Cohutta through a move to Varnell Elementary. She played at North Whitfield Middle before starting at Coahulla Creek High in her freshman year in 2020-21.
"Coming up as a freshman, you hear that a girl is coming out for football," said Wilson, who was in his first year as head coach.
In a coaching career that's spanned more than 30 years, Wilson has had female players try out before, but never one that earned a spot on the varsity.
"It didn't take long to figure out that she's different," Wilson said. "She loves the game and the competition, and she just wants to play."
Bassett competed with the junior varsity for her freshman and sophomore years. A game against Northwest Whitfield sticks out to her.
"Their tackle found out I was a girl and said he was going to hit me as hard as he could," Bassett said. "I just said 'Come and try it.' I pushed him back like 15 yards."
If players ever do make comments to her, Bassett said, they usually stop once play starts. Between Bassett's play and her teammates' presence, opponents may think twice.
"They know better. They know we'll be there to take up for her," Mardis said. "And that's no different from the rest of us, too. We're all in 100% for our teammates, Destiny included, and she'd be the same way if it was one of us."
"Since then, even though I'm a girl, everyone has known even if you hit me as hard as you can, you're not going to hurt me," Bassett said.
Mardis said any hesitancy among the Colts initially to play against a girl was short-lived.
"We really never had that kind of doubt at all," Mardis said. "Once she got out there, she made it clear that she was going to go full-speed, and we should go full-speed, too."
Some opponents never notice. Bassett looks and plays the part in helmet and pads, so much so that Wilson has said new members of the coaching staff in the last couple of years have gone days into their first practices without realizing a female lineman was on the field.
"The first thing I think of is she's probably the toughest kid I've ever coached," Wilson said. "She's the type of player that you really know is not going to make a mistake. She's so schooled in what to do. She wants to continue to prove that she belongs."
Bassett thinks she can continue to belong, even at the next level. She's seen the stories of female players in college.
Sarah Fuller made headlines in 2020 after becoming the first woman to score in a Power Five college football game when she was a placekicker for Vanderbilt University.
Kickers don't see as much contact as linemen do, but Bassett wants to prove female football players can hold their own in the trenches, too.
"I've seen a lot of the girls that play in college, most of them are all skill positions," Bassett said. "I've never seen a female lineman, so I want to be the first girl to make it to college as a lineman."
