Marilyn Monroe once said, “give a girl the right shoes and she can conquer the world.” For Devon McCauley, those shoes are football cleats.

CB South’s football team has been conquering the field in the 2016-17 season with a record of eight wins and two losses so far. For the past two years, the team has been joined by Devon McCauley. And yes, she is a girl.

Devon began playing football for CB South in her freshman year and said she absolutely loves it.  While Devon wanted to start playing in middle school, she was suddenly hit by a car right before the start of seventh grade. This gave her broken ribs, a broken arm, a broken leg, and a concussion. However, that didn’t stop her.

Devon takes on the football field and the rugby field. She said that she likes football better because “it has more of a family feel.” She feels that she can go to her teammates with anything.

Since Devon was a kid, she’s always wanted to be out there playing football. “I grew up in your typical Italian family,” she said. “Every Sunday we would all meet up at someone’s house and watch the games.” Football gets intense so quickly, and she always thought it’d be a great thing to be a part of. “I also have a track record of pushing people around (jokingly), so why not?”

The CB South Football team participates in intense camps and practices throughout the summer and the school year. Devon feels that one of her biggest accomplishments in football is being able to get through all of that.

Devon absolutely loves playing football for South. “The coaches are great and know what they’re doing, they’re great mentors,” she said. Her teammates and coaches of course take the sport very seriously, but she added that they have a lot of fun with it.

Being the only girl on the team is great to Devon. She thinks its really cool to be surrounded buy a group of guys without the “girly drama.” She loves her team and considers them a family that she will always have.

All of the coaches and players treat Devon the same way they’d treat any other boy player. “I need to work my way to the top like everyone else, I have to work hard like everyone else, I get yelled at like everyone else when I do something wrong. I’m treated pretty equally if I say so myself,” said Devon.

She finds so much motivation out of all of her teammates and coaches. Devon said, “they’re there at my best and my worse.”

She specifically looks up to many teammates like Noah Collachi, Sawyer Lyons, Danny Cannon, Ethan Knapp, Pat Fleisch, John Madara, Nate Norris, and Tyler Watson.

Being the only girl on the team, Devon has so much to tell girls in her position: “Don’t let others tell you that you can’t do it.”