University of Maine third baseman Alyssa Derrick wants to be known for more than throwing a football.
Alyssa Derrick was getting so many notifications after her viral video made its rounds on social media that her phone died midway through her double shift at the Chinese restaurant where she waitresses.
Taken on Maine Day (an annual campus spruce-up day), the video of her launching a football with a perfect spiral across a parking lot is nearly two months old, but it didn’t get picked up until she tweeted it last Tuesday and outlets like Bleacher Report and Barstool Sports posted it to their social media feeds over the weekend.
To her, it shouldn’t be a big deal.
“I think it’s because some people don’t think a female could throw a ball that far,” said Derrick, a rising junior at the University of Maine. “So when they see a female throw a ball with a spiral or if they throw it a long distance, they’re very shocked because that’s what they think men can do and women can’t do.”
She didn’t find it extraordinary in the moment. As some students were outside playing cornhole on a day off in early May, she and some of her friends joined a group of guys tossing around football. Instead of throwing to the guys standing a few car-lengths away, she chucked the ball deep.
“That was probably one of my longest throws,” she said.
The guys around her had no idea she had a cannon for an arm, even though she was the softball team’s third baseman. When some people heard she was the one who threw the long ball, a few guys said, “No shot!” Some kept screaming, “Throw it again!” from the balconies around her. Others checked the football to make sure it was a regulation-sized ball. It was.
“They needed validation,” she said.
“They kept feeding me the ball once I threw one. They wouldn’t let anybody else throw. They wanted to keep watching me throw for like 30 minutes, and I was like, ‘OK, anybody else can throw a football now.’
“They all were in awe of when I would throw it. I was like, ‘This is normal for me.’ “
Though Derrick grew up playing softball, the grip and throwing motion required to launch a football came naturally to her. She spent years playing pickup tackle football games with the boys in her neighborhood. In high school, she would be the first person picked for flag football in gym class, and quarterbacked her grade’s Powderpuff team all four years.
Raised in Coventry, Rhode Island, she’s a Boston sports fan, and although some have suggested she should be Tom Brady’s next heir, she’d rather be compared to softball players.
She idolized former Georgia second baseman Alex Hugo in high school, wearing eye black not just for intimidation purposes, but because Hugo wore it too. When Maine played Georgia in the NCAA regionals last May, she admitted she was a little starstruck knowing she’d be going up against the player she looked up to, even though they were only three years apart.
“I was so happy to be on the same field, like I knew that I made it,” Derrick said. “We’re not as different as I thought.”
She likens herself to Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge, who leads the majors with 26 home runs as a rookie. It’s not because she herself led the America East Conference with 15 home runs, but rather because she towers over opponents like the 6-foot-7 Judge does.
Oftentimes, her bullpen will hear other teams speculating on how tall Derrick is either through guesswork or by asking outright. At a game against BYU, she was on deck when she heard a fan yell, “No. 15, how tall are you?” Her coach gave her the OK to answer him, so she turned and screamed, “I’m 6-3!”
Her goal is to play professional softball, but if that doesn’t pan out she hopes her kinesiology major and pre-med minor will help her become a sports medicine physician or orthopedic surgeon. She has dealt with knee and hip injuries of her own, and wants to give back and help other athletes.
Becoming a quarterback could be another career option for Derrick. The Women’s Football Alliance tweeted “there will likely be a spot for her” on one of its 65 teams. She did give professional football a thought after college, saying her mom and best friend would support it.
“You never hear about that and I would totally be into it,” Derrick said.
Many people around her have shown her respect after seeing her toss a pigskin. Some of her friends told her, “I knew you had a cannon!” Some football players were like, “You’ve been hiding this the whole time?” Even Maine football coach Joe Harasymiak tweeted, “Camp starts August 1st.”
Though her video generated massive traffic on social media, Derrick stopped reading the comments that veered toward the realm of misogyny — the ones that mentioned sandwiches and kitchens. When someone tweeted, “Women cannot compete with men in sports. End the propaganda. It’s going to get a girl hurt, or even worse,” she fired back by tweeting, “You’re right, a man could get hurt or a woman could succeed and prove stereotypes wrong.”
“It’s so annoying how when a girl throws a football or a girl does something that a guy can do, they’re automatically put down,” she said.
“There are so many negative comments to girls: ‘Girls can’t play sports, girls can’t be compared to men, don’t ever try to compare yourself to a man because men are so much better.’ Girls need to understand none of that is true. We are all equal and they need to keep pursuing what they want to do. If you want to be a football player and you’re a female, you go out there and be a football player.”
Derrick’s mom wants her to prove that the throw captured on video wasn’t a fluke, whether that means digging up her old Powderpuff clips or making a new video on an actual football field. This would allow Derrick to prove her arm strength isn’t staged, and enable her to actually measure the distance of her throws. Twelve parking spots is approximately 36 yards, but there has yet to be an official estimate. With her arm, she can probably throw farther.
In high school, she’d regularly reach home plate from the center-field fence either on the fly or on one hop. Her arm was so strong that she could throw out a batter at first base from the outfield. Baserunners were warned not to try running on her.
“Even if I was in 12U, it always got me so mad because I’d be in center field and I’d field a ground ball or pop up in deep center field and they wouldn’t tag,” she said.
Now she wants other women to get the athletic respect they deserve. While playing in a charity co-ed slow-pitch softball tournament last week, she noticed that every time a woman stepped to the plate, the guys would creep in — even on her. She said she hit 11 home runs in six games.
“A guy can hit 10-11 home runs and no one cares,” Derrick said, “but when a girl comes out with a wooden bat and hits 10-11 home runs, it’s a huge deal?”
How can she and other women change that perception? By stepping onto the field.
“Just playing with the guys is how we’re gonna show people,” she said.