Dayton Daily News - 

Day and Night, A Diamond on the Defense

By Tom Archdeacon | Sunday, April 19, 2009, 08:37 AM

She had just come from a sentencing hearing on a felony drug conviction and now — as she sat in a hallway outside a Montgomery County Common Pleas courtroom before heading off to another pretrial hearing on a weapons and drug case — she was talking about knocking someone on their rear end.

“Yep, all day long,” she said with smile, “I’m on the defense.”

A Washington Township-based criminal defense attorney by day, Virginia “Jenny” Crews spends many of her evenings this time of year as a linebacker and defensive end for the Dayton Diamonds, one of 38 teams from across the nation in the Women’s Football Alliance.

The Diamonds — who opened their eight-game regular season schedule Saturday night against the Indiana Speed in Indianapolis — are made up a collection of women from all walks of life.

Most are from the Miami Valley. The are white and black, college students, a grandmother, women who played other competitive sports in high school and college and a few who are in their first-ever serious athletic venture.

Among the Diamonds players are a barber, a baker and a horse trainer. There’s a medical school student, a grade school teacher, occupational and physical therapists, a Sinclair fitness instructor, an Air Force officer and Crews, the 33-year-old lawyer who lives in West Carrollton.

This past week she was involved in everything from drug possession and assault cases to a custody hearing and an abuse and neglect case in juvenile court.

But Thursday evening, April 16. — after a a day in the downtown Dayton courtrooms — there she was at John Wolfe Park in Trotwood, wearing a mud-stained white practice jersey over bulky shoulder pads, black padded pants, long black stockings and high topped black shoes. A pair of sure-grip gloves covered her hands and her long hair cascaded out the back of her black helmet.

The Diamonds were having their final preseason practice and though she also worked some as a fullback, Crews primarily — and preferably — played defense.

“It’s a lot more fun tackling someone than being tackled,” she grinned. “It’s just so much fun to come out here, run around and hit someone.

“During the day my job is generally very stressful and the schedule is demanding,. So coming here is just a great stress releaser.”

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She said she was folding laundry at home last year while watching the news on television with her husband, Jeff, when they both heard mention of try-outs for the women’s professional football team being formed in Dayton:

“I got all excited and said, ‘Now that looks like a lot of fun.’ He kind of looked at me like I was a little crazy, but underneath he couldn’t be surprised.”

Once a soccer and tennis player at Wayne High, Crews calls herself “adventuresome,” a qualifier that helps explain her eloping when she was just 18 — she and Jeff are now married 15 years — deciding to become a lawyer after getting a biology degree from the University of Arizona and working three years in a genetics lab and several years ago joining a bruising, all-woman’s rugby team here in Dayton.

After going through tryouts and making the Diamonds team last year, she still had to explain to people just what she was doing:

“They’d go, ‘Oh, isn’t that nice. You play touch football or flag?’ And I’d go, ‘No, real football. We wear pads and we tackle people.’

“At first my mom was worried. She said, ‘Can’t you just be the team attorney?’

“But once I got my family to a game, they were hooked. Now my parents, my in-laws, everybody goes to the games. My mom and dad have their own business and with a shirt press, they made T-shirts with my No. 38 on them for everybody. My dad made caps with my football picture on them, too.

“My little niece, Lilly, she’s just four, wears a shirt that says ‘My Aunt’s a Linebacker.’ And my little nephew (John Jackson) is our team’s water boy. For all of us, it’s become a real family affair.”

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Crews said some of her family and friends are still learning to appreciate her work as a defense attorney.

“They see some of the cases I take and they say, ‘How can you represent the people you do?’” she said quietly. “They have the wrong perspective about what I do. They think I’m just trying to get people off, but it’s not really that.

“I make sure all the rules and procedures are followed by the police and the prosecutor. And I do enjoy helping people — sometimes it’s helping them from themselves and getting them into treatment and programs that make them more productive and able to realize the opportunities out there.”

The flip side of her daytime defender’s job — her evenings with the Diamonds — is about seizing opportunities, as well.

“Once women get out of high school — and certainly when they leave college — the opportunity for competitive team sports for them is almost non existent,” she said. “Hopefully, this will open some doors for women and maybe down the way the sport will grow just as basketball has.”

As for now, women’s football still is emerging from the fledgling stages. Players don’t get paid, they must pay their own way to play. Their two games jerseys, uniform pants and pads cost each of them close to $400.

When the Diamonds take a charter bus to away games — this year they play in Indianapolis, Toledo, Fort Wayne and near Kalamazoo, Mich. — they help pay travel costs and buy their own meals.

Yet the expenditures are worth it, Crews said:

“We spend loys of hours each week together with practice and bus rides and games — and they’re important hours to give up, our free time — but we get so many different things out of it.

“There’s great camaraderie with a bunch of women from all walks of life — people you likely wouldn’t have met were it not for this.

“And on the field you may find a confidence you didn’t know you had before. Maybe some abilities, too. And it’s really fun.

“Yet, maybe best of all, is that experience of playing under the lights on a Saturday night. It’s an experience you’re not going to get anyplace else in your life.

“And that is a real adventure.” COLUMN: Day and Night, A Diamond on the Defense

By Tom Archdeacon | Sunday, April 19, 2009, 08:37 AM

She had just come from a sentencing hearing on a felony drug conviction and now — as she sat in a hallway outside a Montgomery County Common Pleas courtroom before heading off to another pretrial hearing on a weapons and drug case — she was talking about knocking someone on their rear end.

“Yep, all day long,” she said with smile, “I’m on the defense.”

A Washington Township-based criminal defense attorney by day, Virginia “Jenny” Crews spends many of her evenings this time of year as a linebacker and defensive end for the Dayton Diamonds, one of 38 teams from across the nation in the Women’s Football Alliance.

The Diamonds — who opened their eight-game regular season schedule Saturday night against the Indiana Speed in Indianapolis — are made up a collection of women from all walks of life.

Most are from the Miami Valley. The are white and black, college students, a grandmother, women who played other competitive sports in high school and college and a few who are in their first-ever serious athletic venture.

Among the Diamonds players are a barber, a baker and a horse trainer. There’s a medical school student, a grade school teacher, occupational and physical therapists, a Sinclair fitness instructor, an Air Force officer and Crews, the 33-year-old lawyer who lives in West Carrollton.

This past week she was involved in everything from drug possession and assault cases to a custody hearing and an abuse and neglect case in juvenile court.

But Thursday evening, April 16. — after a a day in the downtown Dayton courtrooms — there she was at John Wolfe Park in Trotwood, wearing a mud-stained white practice jersey over bulky shoulder pads, black padded pants, long black stockings and high topped black shoes. A pair of sure-grip gloves covered her hands and her long hair cascaded out the back of her black helmet.

The Diamonds were having their final preseason practice and though she also worked some as a fullback, Crews primarily — and preferably — played defense.

“It’s a lot more fun tackling someone than being tackled,” she grinned. “It’s just so much fun to come out here, run around and hit someone.

“During the day my job is generally very stressful and the schedule is demanding,. So coming here is just a great stress releaser.”

xxxxxxxxxxxxx

She said she was folding laundry at home last year while watching the news on television with her husband, Jeff, when they both heard mention of try-outs for the women’s professional football team being formed in Dayton:

“I got all excited and said, ‘Now that looks like a lot of fun.’ He kind of looked at me like I was a little crazy, but underneath he couldn’t be surprised.”

Once a soccer and tennis player at Wayne High, Crews calls herself “adventuresome,” a qualifier that helps explain her eloping when she was just 18 — she and Jeff are now married 15 years — deciding to become a lawyer after getting a biology degree from the University of Arizona and working three years in a genetics lab and several years ago joining a bruising, all-woman’s rugby team here in Dayton.

After going through tryouts and making the Diamonds team last year, she still had to explain to people just what she was doing:

“They’d go, ‘Oh, isn’t that nice. You play touch football or flag?’ And I’d go, ‘No, real football. We wear pads and we tackle people.’

“At first my mom was worried. She said, ‘Can’t you just be the team attorney?’

“But once I got my family to a game, they were hooked. Now my parents, my in-laws, everybody goes to the games. My mom and dad have their own business and with a shirt press, they made T-shirts with my No. 38 on them for everybody. My dad made caps with my football picture on them, too.

“My little niece, Lilly, she’s just four, wears a shirt that says ‘My Aunt’s a Linebacker.’ And my little nephew (John Jackson) is our team’s water boy. For all of us, it’s become a real family affair.”

xxxxxxxxxx

Crews said some of her family and friends are still learning to appreciate her work as a defense attorney.

“They see some of the cases I take and they say, ‘How can you represent the people you do?’” she said quietly. “They have the wrong perspective about what I do. They think I’m just trying to get people off, but it’s not really that.

“I make sure all the rules and procedures are followed by the police and the prosecutor. And I do enjoy helping people — sometimes it’s helping them from themselves and getting them into treatment and programs that make them more productive and able to realize the opportunities out there.”

The flip side of her daytime defender’s job — her evenings with the Diamonds — is about seizing opportunities, as well.

“Once women get out of high school — and certainly when they leave college — the opportunity for competitive team sports for them is almost non existent,” she said. “Hopefully, this will open some doors for women and maybe down the way the sport will grow just as basketball has.”

As for now, women’s football still is emerging from the fledgling stages. Players don’t get paid, they must pay their own way to play. Their two games jerseys, uniform pants and pads cost each of them close to $400.

When the Diamonds take a charter bus to away games — this year they play in Indianapolis, Toledo, Fort Wayne and near Kalamazoo, Mich. — they help pay travel costs and buy their own meals.

Yet the expenditures are worth it, Crews said:

“We spend loys of hours each week together with practice and bus rides and games — and they’re important hours to give up, our free time — but we get so many different things out of it.

“There’s great camaraderie with a bunch of women from all walks of life — people you likely wouldn’t have met were it not for this.

“And on the field you may find a confidence you didn’t know you had before. Maybe some abilities, too. And it’s really fun.

“Yet, maybe best of all, is that experience of playing under the lights on a Saturday night. It’s an experience you’re not going to get anyplace else in your life.

“And that is a real adventure.”