TOMBALL, Texas – If you decide to head to a Tomball Memorial High School football game, you may notice something about one of their kickers.
“I’m good friends with the last kicker of the football team," Lorelai Stramrood said. “He had let me know that he had torn his quad and he knows that I have range in soccer and he suggested that I come and try to kick for the football team."
Stramrood had already decided she wasn’t going to play volleyball her senior year, so the star soccer player figured it was worth the shot.
“We knew that she had been a star volleyball player, a star soccer player,” said head football coach Sam Parker. “We knew what kind of athlete she was. So I said, ‘Great, have her come out and kick.' She came out and I think there was some ‘Hmm, I’m not sure,' but then she kicked the ball, and everybody was like, ‘Let’s sign her up.'”
“It’s so much fun. I’m around a group of guys that make me feel included, make me feel wanted,” Stramrood said.
Two of her biggest fans? Several of the coaches' daughters.
“It means so much to me. And I never thought that this type of outcome would happen with me being a kicker for the football team,” she said.
“My daughter is one that like runs and hugs her every time, and wants to take a picture with her after every game,” Parker said. “The fact that she is a role model is so exciting for me.”
Stramrood, who has already committed to Baylor’s soccer team, goes straight from football practice to soccer practice every night and impresses those around her with her work ethic.
“I want other girls to realize how it can happen," Parker said. "But I also want them to realize how hard she’s worked to get to this point now.”