BEDFORD, Ohio — In football, and any other sport, a good coach pushes their team to reach their full potential and finds new ways to win after the team is hit with defeat.
"We lost our first two games, and it came down to the other teams had kickers and we didn't,” Zac Toth, the head varsity football coach at Bedford High School, said.
Toth is in his second year leading the program, and after losing what ended up being the first four games of the 2023 season, he knew he needed to find a kicker. He says he asked players on the boys soccer team, but they all turned him down.
That’s when Toth approached the star of the varsity girls team, and she said yes.
"I like getting myself into new experiences," junior Anna Ningler-Farone says.
The 17-year-old became the only "Lady Bearcat" to play with the boys this season.
"Her brother actually was the kicker last year, and she expressed some interest," Toth explained. "So I knew she had the background with the family, and I knew she would be up to the task."
Ningler-Farone's soccer coach, Chan Coleman, was a little concerned about her playing football.
"She's the best girl on the team," she said, and I was like 'Please don't get her hurt.'"
Anna had an immediate impact on the gridiron. After making an extra point kick in a Week 5 win against Brush, she became the first Bedford female athlete in the high school’s history to score in a varsity football game.
"Right from that first kick, we knew that whatever barriers there are, we're gonna break them, because we need Anna to kick and she's going to help us win some football games," Toth declared.
Bedford went on to win the next three games with Ningler-Farone as their kicker. She made a combined 10 PAT kicks in those matchups.
"I don't know where this could take me," she says. "I'm excited to see where I could go from here."
The Bedford preseason Academic All-American even made her first tackle in this year’s homecoming game against East Cleveland Shaw, when she successfully completed a kickoff after scoring an extra point. The other team's player broke through tackle attempts, and Anna was the last line of defense. Her dad remembers that moment with pride.
"She was the last one in front of the end zone," Michael Farone recalls. "She went running over like it was nothing. She never tackled anybody before, and you would have not known it."
For Ningler-Farone and Toth, a girl's presence on the football team speaks to the character of Anna's male teammates.
"I don't feel like the only girl on the team," Anna says. "They don't make me feel belittled or something because I'm not a guy."
"They're fine kind of stepping to the side and letting her have some of the spotlight and sharing that with her," Toth added. "It's really cool and uplifting to see as a coach that your young men are rallying behind a female kicker."
Anna is now an inspiration to other female athletes. Before a game in September, the dual fall sport athlete met a fifth grade girl who plays tackle football for Nordonia’s youth league. The young girl wanted to meet the "Lady Bearcat" who made history in Bedford.
With Anna handling the kicking duties, Bedford rallied to win five of its last six games to finish the regular season with a respectable 5-5 record. Depending on how things shake out Friday night with other matchups in the area, the Bearcats still have a shot at making the Division III playoffs.
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