From kicker to homecoming princess, Gaby Rourke blazing trails for Atlantic Coast football

Under the Friday night lights at Atlantic Coast, the homecoming princess wore a football helmet.

For Gaby Rourke, wearing a lot of hats is nothing new.

On Thursday afternoon, it was a cowboy hat, part of her costume for homecoming festivities. On Friday evening, she donned the tiara of the Atlantic Coast High School homecoming princess. And, in between, a football helmet. Really.

The Atlantic Coast junior, the first girl to compete for the Stingrays' varsity football team, performed double duty Friday night — homecoming princess and part-time place-kicker during high school football against Raines.

And for Rourke, it's just one part of an off-the-charts athletic autumn for a multi-sport athlete in a sports world that often values specialization.

"If there's a competition, I'll be in," she said. "It could be who can clean the fastest, or who can run the fastest, but I'll try my best to be the best."

She won a spot on the Stingrays' varsity football squad over the summer... and juggles volleyball for Atlantic Coast... and club soccer at Florida Elite Soccer Academy. Beginning with the regular season opener on Nov. 9, she's preparing to take the field for the Stingrays' girls soccer squad as well.

But for two more weeks, she's prepared to compete against high school boys in varsity football, against opponents several inches taller and well over 100 pounds heavier.

"It's just her overall being an all-around athlete to where she can do it, whether she's kicking a football, a soccer ball, heck, a tennis ball or whatever," Atlantic Coast football coach Mike Montemayor said. "She just has that natural ability to just kick it, and she's got some good power behind that leg as well."

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BLAZING A TRAIL FOR STINGRAYS

Circle Sept. 9 as the day when Rourke's milestone moment became official, when she stepped onto the field for the second-half kickoff in a 22-6 loss to Westside.

"It was definitely surreal," she said of her first kickoff. "It felt like a movie, honestly, hearing the crowd cheering your name and seeing the opponent straight ahead of you looking you dead in the eyes while you're kicking off."

Even with 250-pound blockers stampeding in her direction, she said she didn't want the kickoff to be her only statistic.

"I was actually hoping to be able to get a tackle that game, but you know, my defense stopped it for me," she said.

With that kickoff, Rourke joined the select number of girls to compete alongside boys in high school football. As of 2018-19, the last year with complete statistics not affected by the coronavirus pandemic, the National Federation of State High School Association's annual participation survey listed 89 girls competing in football in Florida, mostly as kickers.

The Jacksonville area has produced several of the Sunshine State's notable stories of girls on the gridiron. Seven years ago, Bolles' Erika Clark earned honorable mention All-State honors at the kicker position, a Northeast Florida first.

Chris'tal Smith made an even rarer breakthrough during her ninth-grade season in 2017 at Wolfson, lining up at running back, on defense and on special teams. In her first varsity game, she rushed eight times for 37 yards, and even forced a fumble.

In the last half-dozen years, a few others have also seen action: Among them, LizAnne Fogarty kicked for Clay and booted a crucial field goal in a decisive district game against Palatka; First Coast's Amber LaGatta delivered a game-winning field goal against the Stingrays in 2016; and Fletcher's Kindree Sullivan, like Rourke a multi-sport athlete, kicked for the Senators at one stage in the 2020 season.

Rourke said it was Sullivan's success with Fletcher that motivated her to try her new sport. If one All-Gateway Conference soccer star could win on the gridiron, why couldn't she become the next?

"I kind of was just like, man, I want to be able to do that," she said. "I want to be able to do something that no one else has done before and kind of leave my name in the history books. It was a challenge because you know it's never been done before at Atlantic Coast, and I just wanted to be the first to do it."

Still, football didn't enter the picture as a serious option until this summer. Around June, Rourke began training with former Jacksonville Jaguars kicker Mike Hollis, who himself made history earlier this year with a brief comeback at age 50 for the National Arena League's Jacksonville Sharks.

"I was just getting the practice, just to try it, and then I realized, 'You know, maybe I do want to do this,'" she said.

'A LITTLE OVERWHELMING'

During the summer, the question came in for Montemayor: Was Atlantic Coast football ready for one of its all-around athletic aces in girls sports to join the football team?

"She has a great leg, and when she approached me about it, I didn't hesitate," Montemayor said.

Still, Rourke wondered how the adjustment would progress — both how she would adapt to the sport and how her new teammates would respond. Over the last two months, that bond has grown.

"It was definitely a different experience," she said. "It was a little overwhelming, you know, being the only girl out there, and it's a different environment for me and the other football players. And they were a little cautious at first and they didn't know if I was actually here to play football or if I was actually here to just to be the manager or whatever, but they've become accepting of me and they treat me like a true teammate."

So by the time Thursday's football practice rolled around, Rourke was just one of the players on the team, laughing, joking and tugging on helmets with teammates during pauses between kicking drills.

Although she hasn't yet notched points on the scoreboard in football — Kristian Karoglan, a senior with a powerful and proven right leg that delivered the game-winning field goal against Mandarin in 2021, has handled the bulk of the Stingrays' kicking this season — Rourke has worked to make herself ready for that responsibility if it comes about.

Two more games — Friday at Creekside and Nov. 4 at home against Fletcher — remain to chase a chance at points on the football field in her junior year. Through three months of practice, she's stretched out her kicking range to around 45 yards.

"The hardest adjustment for me would definitely be my kicking technique, because in soccer, you use the inside of your foot to pass," she said. "With football, you use mainly the top of your foot, so that would probably be the hardest adjustment, learning how to kick correctly, with placement of the ball, power and all that stuff."

A BALANCING ACT

Life as a football kicker, a soccer goalkeeper, a volleyball middle blocker, a homecoming princess and — don't forget — a high school student means a life on fast-forward.

But taking on new challenges is familiar for Rourke, starting with her early years with her older brothers, Austin and Tyler. Both played high school baseball at nearby Parker, and Gaby was younger than her brothers by seven and eight years. Still, she constantly tried to keep up.

"They really inspired me to do everything that I'm doing now... I've always looked up to them and I always wanted to be them and, you know as a sibling you want to be better than them," she said.

Gaby said finding the right sport took a while. She began in T-ball when she was 4, but pretty soon, she said she found the slow-paced life in the T-ball outfield wasn't for her: "I wouldn't go on the field unless I had a Ring Pop."

Her soccer experience came later, starting at age 8, and she didn't begin playing goalkeeper full-time until she turned 12. Then came softball, plus volleyball and flag football, now building the athletic resume to the point where every week is a little bit wild.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, she played for Atlantic Coast volleyball in the District 1-7A tournament, including a marathon Wednesday night semifinal against No. 1 seed Bartram Trail. Three times the Stingrays got within a point of knocking off the Bears in the fourth set, but Bartram Trail fought off three match points to end Atlantic Coast's season.

And on Thursday afternoon, Rourke's week got even busier: She was selected as homecoming princess for the junior class ahead of Friday's homecoming football game against Raines.

The afternoon spun into overdrive. After completing a mid-afternoon walkthrough in advance of the following day's homecoming festivities, she hurried to prepare for the 3 p.m. start of Stingrays' first week of soccer practice, participating in drills on the soccer field for about an hour and scoring in an intra-squad scrimmage. Then a quick change into a helmet and pads, and a brisk walk across the campus to the football practice field to begin field goal practice.

It's a commitment of several hours each day, plus further travel for club soccer practice and tournaments out of town. By now, she's used to scrambling across campus from practice to practice during afternoons, then heading out to club practice and — when free time pops up — staying up to date on homework.

"How she balances that on top of being a good student is beyond me," Montemayor said. "Some kids have a hard time just balancing one sport with academics."

The workload was huge. Still, when Rourke approached Atlantic Coast girls soccer coach Kenny Mukasa before the season to tell him she was interested in adding the gridiron to her routine, he didn't object.

"I told her, I believe in you. If you think you can do it, I believe you can do it, but it's up to you in terms of time management," Mukasa said.

EYES ON THE SOCCER FIELD

Football is getting the attention right now. But Rourke views soccer as her future.

As a sophomore, she earned selection to the All-Gateway Conference team, lining up at nearly every position on the field for Atlantic Coast — a sharply different experience from her usual routine as a club goalkeeper. Last year, she tallied 11 goals and three assists in the Stingrays' regular season.

"It's definitely been a fun experience," Rourke said. "It really just kind of gives you a different perspective of things, especially as a goalkeeper. I could be thinking, you know, if I was a striker, what kind of ball would I want? Or if I was the center back, where would I go? It kind of helped a lot, like understanding the positions and what I should say. Because as a goalkeeper, it's a leadership role and you have to give information, because you see everything back there."

Schools in the nation's premier soccer conferences are taking notice. This week, she's scheduled to take a visit to Kentucky in the SEC. Over in the ACC, Pitt is also among the leading pursuers, and multiple other NCAA Division I programs are also in the running.

For Duval County public schools, that's a lot of buzz. Mukasa said the last Atlantic Coast player during his tenure to draw comparable recruiting attention was Danielle Gordon, who earned All-First Coast honors in the mid-2010s and ultimately signed with West Virginia.

"One minute she could be in goal, another minute she could be in a center back role," Mukasa said. "She may play outside back, maybe up front scoring goals for us, which is where she did a great, great job last year for us."

Rourke's mother, Cindy, said the family has heard for years from soccer coaches who have preached the importance of specialization. Now that colleges are inquiring, the pendulum seems to be swinging the other way.

For those colleges, athletic versatility is a plus, and football is one more part of Gaby's formula.

"[Other sports] really helped me with soccer," she said. "Volleyball has helped my vertical a lot. I think it's actually added three inches to my vertical.

"Football's helped me with different types of kicking techniques. Softball, when I played my freshman year, helped me with tracking the ball differently, learning how to track either a softball or a soccer ball. Flag football helped my catching ability. And every sport usually helped me in the long run with other sports and helping prevent injury with using different muscles."

LOOKING AHEAD

In the long run, Rourke said she's hoping to keep sports firmly in her routine. Maybe someday, she said, she might work in the sports broadcast field, trading goalkeeping gloves for a microphone. Her athletic dream, though, is to eventually build a career in professional soccer.

It's happened before in Gateway Conference soccer, even at the goalkeeper position.

Five years ago, Sandalwood's Mandy McGlynn came up through a similar soccer background — goalkeeper at club level, field player in high school — and earned a call to the U.S. women's under-17 and under-20 national teams, representing the United States at the FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup in France. After playing college soccer at Virginia Tech and lining up in the National Women's Soccer League with Sky Blue FC, McGlynn now plays in Sweden with Pitea IF.

Rourke is confident that her athletic pursuits — whether kicking footballs or blocking volleyballs — are moving her in the right direction.

"I've had a lot of people in my past life tell me you have to focus on one sport, especially because you want to go to college for soccer and you need to focus on this one sport and get better at it. But I'm a firm believer that playing multiple sports can help you get better in the one you want to focus on," she said.

"What keeps me also motivated is for the other people who want to do it but are too scared to. I kind of want to be someone that people can reach out to."

And maybe she's not finished adding to her sport collection. Next year, she says, she's hoping to compete for Atlantic Coast in track and field.

Why not? After a season of staring down 250-pound maulers across the line, a high-jump bar doesn't feel intimidating.

"What keeps me motivated is really the people who tell me I can't do it," she said, "because I love proving people wrong."

Clayton Freeman covers high school sports and more for the Florida Times-Union. Follow him on Twitter at @CFreemanJAX, and sign up for the First Coast Varsity newsletter at https://profile.jacksonville.com/newsletters/first-coast-varsity/.

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Atlantic Coast kicker Gaby Rourke juggles football, girls soccer, homecoming