‘She’s a celebrity.’ Meet LaGrange High’s female kicker with big football plans
Carlee Roland walks past her LaGrange High School teammates on a rainy November afternoon. The Grangers are hard at work in their new state-of-the-art indoor practice facility, gearing up for an important region game against Troup.
“Carlee!” one teammate shouts.
“She’s a celebrity!” another says.
Roland, a freshman, laughs, her face beaming red beneath her shiny gray helmet.
Roland is a kicker on the Grangers football team. And the pressure of having all eyes on her as she lines up for a kick — not to mention an on-camera interview in front of her whole team — is nothing new to her.
“All the players feel like they’re her brothers,” Grangers head coach Matt Napier said. “She’s got an infectious personality.”
From football to ... football
Roland has played football since middle school, where she was one of three female players at Gardner Newman Middle in LaGrange: Roland as a kicker, Breyanna Leonard as a safety and Mikeiya McCants as a lineman. She’s hit 35-yard field goals in practice this season.
Roland was the first female kicker at Gardner Newman. She played soccer in middle school and plays today for AFC Lightning’s Troup County club, but it took some convincing for her mother to sign on to the idea of her kicking footballs instead of soccer balls.
“At night, they’d (my parents) have their conversation at the dinner table,” Roland said. “And they were just going at it. She didn’t want me to get hurt.
“I don’t know how he got her convinced, but he got her (to agree).”
Roland ended up trying out, and making, the Gardner Newman football team after its coach saw a video of her kicking the football in the front yard. The day after her tryout, she had her first football game.
But that wasn’t Roland’s first time touching a football.
There are stories about Roland from her childhood, according to Napier, that involve tackle football in the yard.
There’s even a story about her playing baseball and taking a line drive. She just shrugged it off and kept playing.
Kicking footballs — and taking names
Roland, a backup on the varsity team, primarily kicks for the Grangers’ JV team. But she saw her first varsity action this season, in the fourth quarter of LaGrange’s 47-7 win over Jordan.
After an Asa Leath touchdown run, Napier called Roland’s number on the extra point.
“I was so nervous,” Roland said. “I was shaking in my stance, and then it all happened so fast.”
Roland knew the kick was good the moment it left her foot, and she even drew a late hit flag after an edge rusher on Jordan’s defense clattered into her after the kick.
The Grangers sideline went nuts, according to their head coach. Roland jogged off the field, as captured in a photo by the LaGrange Daily News’ Kevin Eckleberry, grinning ear-to-ear.
“They’ve had my back through it all,” Roland said. “They’ve been my No. 1 supporters.”
‘You play football?’
It’s a question Roland hears everywhere she goes, whether she’s in a classroom or on the sideline during a Grangers football game.
“I guess people just think (me kicking) is different,” Roland said. “That’s the major question people ask: ‘Oh wait, you play football?’”
Roland is, obviously and statistically, one of a select few. According to a 2018 NFL Football Operations study, the most recent available data, 2,404 girls played tackle football.
In Georgia, 0.2% of football players were female, according to the study.
Roland has no plans to stop kicking. She plans to play for her remaining three-and-a-half years of high school.
“It tells you a lot about her personality,” Napier said. “Her willingness to stand on the line and do something outside the box. Any time you get a person with that kind of character, and that kind of moral courage, you root for it.”
