Remember Mallard Creek’s female football kicker? She just broke a school soccer record
UPDATE: Last fall, The Observer chronicled Mallard Creek football kicker Charlotte Stavis, who is also a star on the Mavericks girls soccer team. Tuesday night (May 9), Stavis scored six goals in a game to reach 43 for the season. She broke Mallard Creek’s single-season scoring record. Below is the original story on Stavis.
Charlotte Stavis doesn’t know how many more weeks she’ll get to be the kicker for Mallard Creek’s nationally ranked football team, so she plans to enjoy every moment.
Stavis has amassed more than 23,000 TikTok followers detailing her time as a kicker, and she’s gained a whole lot of big brothers.
“It’s just so surreal,” Stavis said at practice this week, smiling through blue braces with her long, curly blonde hair blowing in the wind. “Just getting the opportunity to come out and compete at this level and seeing all the people cheering for us and supporting us, and being out here for this whole experience ... it’s just been amazing.”
And it all happened quickly.
Late last fall, Stavis was at a cross-country practice when one of her girls soccer coaches asked her to try kicking a field goal. She hit a couple, and soon thereafter was kicking in front of Mallard Creek football coach Kennedy Tinsley, who needed a kicker.
Two weeks later, Stavis was on the sidelines, handling kickoff duties against one of the Mavericks’ biggest rivals, Hough High School.
“I had two weeks of practice prior to it,” she said. “I kicked off and I had to run right in front of a guy. Fortunately, I didn’t have to make the tackle, but it was quite nerve-racking.”
A few weeks later, in the playoffs, Stavis was forced into the action. First, she pushed an Asheville player out of bounds on a kickoff, notching a tackle. But later, a more serious situation arose.
“I kicked off and a guy was running at me full speed,” said Stavis, who is about 5-3, “and I never had to deal with that kind of situation. But it ended up working out. We made the play.”
And Stavis couldn’t wait to come back on the field.
“I love it,” she said. “It’s a lot of fun. I love my teammates, my coaches. It’s just a great experience.”
Stavis isn’t alone
Having a girl kicking on the football team is not as unusual as it used to be, even on a nationally ranked team like the Mavericks.
This week, High School Football America ranked six teams from North Carolina among the nation’s best. Mallard Creek was the highest, but Providence Day was also ranked. One of the Chargers’ kickers is 17-year-old senior Sydney McCorkle.
McCorkle was 15 when she became the first girl to play N.C. private school football two years ago. Now, McCorkle has earned a scholarship offer from Division III Sewanee, the University of the South.
McCorkle and Stavis are not the only girls kicking for a varsity football program in the area, either. There are at least two more:
▪ In Union County, senior Kristin Oliver stepped in for Piedmont’s starting kicker earlier this month and converted her first extra-point attempt against Marvin Ridge. Oliver has also played some defensive line.
▪ At West Lincoln, Dee Dee Wallace is the kicker for a 7-2 team headed for the playoffs. She was named homecoming queen a few ago, wearing her shoulder pads, and Wallace followed Trista Primmer, who kicked for West Lincoln in the 2021 season. Primmer is believed to be the first female to score points in football game in Lincoln County.
‘She’s gonna be nice with it’
Samer Alhassan, another kicker for Mallard Creek and also a soccer player on the boys team, went to middle school with Stavis. He said he knew then that she would make a really good high school football kicker one day.
Stavis was featured in a YouTube video a few years ago that detailed her dedication to soccer and her athleticism. It has nearly 200,000 views today.
“She was so good at soccer back then,” Alhassan said, “and I always thought she would be good at (football) kicking. Like, you can use your soccer skills at kicking. You just have to improve on some things, like your follow through. So when she first came out, I was like, ‘She’s gonna be nice with it.’ ”
Stavis impressed her coaches and teammates on the Mallard Creek football team from the start. She lifts weights. She goes to pregame and postgame meals. She rides the bus.
One difference, Tinsley said, is that when the team goes to the locker room to change, Stavis goes to the women’s bathroom.
Another? Tinsley is cognizant of how he addresses the team.
“The biggest adjustment is me,” Tinsley said. “As a coach, you’re always doing the cliché thing. It’s, ‘Hey men.’ We’re trying to get them to grow up to be great men one day, and then you look up and you have a girl on the team. So I catch myself, and it becomes, ‘Hey guys.’ But it’s been a cool ride and adjustment, but the concept is the same. You want to help them become great people, and Charlotte is a great example of that.”
Stavis isn’t ready for her “fun” to end. After a critical battle with rival Chambers on Friday, Mallard Creek is hoping make a playoff run that ends with the school’s fourth state championship.
“I’ll definitely miss it,” Stavis said. “I’ll definitely miss my teammates and my coaches. I mean, they’re amazing, and like family.”
This story was originally published October 28, 2022 at 6:00 AM.
