Charlie Rosenthal never kicked a football before December, but is already getting consistent at 40-yard field goals.
So naturally the 16-year-old sophomore at San Marcos High School is looking forward to Friday afternoon’s preseason opener, facing visiting La Costa Canyon High School.
Oh, and Charlie is already looking ahead to her junior season and a possible varsity spot.
Yes, her.
Charlie Estelle Rosenthal — her birth name — is far from being the first girl to move from the soccer pitch to the gridiron in San Diego County. But the nearly 5-10 athlete — brown hair braided to fit in her Knights helmet — is considered a vital player.
“She’s the best field goal kicker and PAT kicker we have,” says junior varsity coach David Diaz. “We don’t see her as a girl on the team — we see her as Charlie, our kicker.”
Diaz says Charlie reached out via email a couple months ago with a brief description of her kicking ability, past experience through soccer and videos of her kicking field goals.
“I was excited getting the email not because she was a girl but because our PAT kicker is now on varsity,” he said Thursday. “She is so strong as an individual, and I’m excited to see how she can help us this year.”
Charlie lives in Carlsbad — in the San Marcos High attendance zone — with her financial tech company mother, Cindy Durant, and photographer stepfather, John Durant.
Her father, Max Rosenthal, actively supports her, and tells the story of how she met former San Diego Chargers kicker John Carney at a camp he runs at the Army-Navy Academy in Carlsbad.
Charlie met Carney on Dec. 12 — just three months ago.
“Just by happenstance, we were there,” Max says. “A couple of guys walked down and were talking with Charlie and giving her some pointers and ideas — and we just kind of kept in touch with them. Charlie started getting more and more excited about it, so we gave them a call and then we got one of their guys working with Charlie on a regular basis.”
She learned to see her kicking leg as a golf club — with “technique and ritual” like swinging a club, Max says. “Turns out that just kicking 100 balls every day isn’t necessarily the way to do it. But it’s kicking the ball the right way from a bunch of different points on the field.”
Charlie says she started kicking and really enjoyed it, “so I emailed the varsity coach, asking if I could just work out with the team, and he said that JV actually was in need of a kicker. So I joined the team like that.”
San Marcos High School allows only three members of player families to attend games in person, per COVID restrictions. But games are expected to be live-streamed here on YouTube.com. Hers is set for 4:30 p.m.
Ron Marquez, events and operations coordinator of CIF San Diego section, says CIF has no specific rules addressing females players on football teams “as these are handled at the district/school level,” but could recall other local girls kicking for boys teams.
“There have been more and more female place kickers on football teams in recent history,” he said Thursday. “I was at Cathedral Catholic up until 2018 and they have had at least two female place kickers on the JV, with one actually making the varsity roster for a game.”
Others have taken part on South Bay teams, Marquez said.
San Diego High School’s Mia Labovitz is said to be the first girl to play boys football locally — in the late 1980s. She drew fame by booting the game-winning field goal against St. Augustine, an all-boys school, in 1988. (The final score was 3-0.)
San Diego’s Dan McLellan, an NFL writer for WBLZMedia, apparently referred to Labovitz in a tweet regarding Rosenthal.
“I went to Granite Hills [High School] and remember going to a game where she kicked against us and my memory is that she was far better than our kicker,” he said.
Steve Brand, the veteran former Union-Tribune prep sports writer, recalls that Leslie Coons daughter of Serra High School coach Skip Coons, was also a world-class hammer-thrower.
“She’s still the only full-time female starter in San Diego area football history that I know of,” he said. “She played linebacker and was excellent.”
The record for a field goal by a high school girl is thought to be 48 yards — by Heidi Garrett of Riverside, playing for Martin Luther King High School in 2004. Perhaps the earliest girl to score on the prep gridiron was Luverne “Toad” Wise of Alabama’s Escambia County, who kicked six extra points in the 1939 season.
In Ohio last fall, soccer players Morgan Ross and Alexis Wearstler at Coventry High School joined their Akron area school’s football team as kickers.
Charlie Rosenthal is well aware of the current star — Sarah Fuller, a converted soccer player at Vanderbilt University. Last November, Fuller became the first woman to play football for a Power Five conference team when she kicked off against Missouri. Two weeks later against Tennessee, she kicked an extra point to become the first woman to score in a Power Five football game.
But Fuller wasn’t the catalyst for Charlie’s decision to seek a role with the Fighting Knights.
“She wanted to play anyhow,” says Cindy, her mother. “So [Fuller] really didn’t have much bearing on it.”
Charlie says she’s been training since the end of January, and now practices six days a week.
“I think the main thing is people just want you to be good at your job,” she said. “And so as long as you’re able to do what you need to do, nobody’s going to question you.”
She uses a soccer shoe on her kicking foot — two sizes smaller than her plant foot shoe. It helps with precise feel, she says, and “you can kick it a lot higher too.”
Charlie expects to do kickoffs as well as field goals and points-after-touchdowns — aware that she’ll be expected to tackle a runner returning the ball.
“I try not to get too nervous about things,” she said. “I try to just channel that energy into excitement.” Her goal: “Put points on the board for my team.”
And eventually play football in college. Her major? “Probably something with environmental sciences,” she says.
Born at Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla, Charlie grew up in Carlsbad, attended La Costa Meadows Elementary and San Elijo Middle School and dabbled in recreational soccer since age 6 or 7.
Charlie has a banker brother named Sam, 19, who didn’t play sports. Her dad, Max, says he played prep football in Walnut Creek.
“She’s just born with this athletic talent,” says her mother. “I have zero.”
Cindy Durant adds: “She happens to be an athlete, but she’s very, very casual about her skill. … She’s very, very brave and strong but really the kindest person. That’s more important to me than anything else. She’s the kindest person you’ll ever meet.”
Updated at 9:40 a.m. March 12, 2021
