'She just worked.' How an eighth grade girl shows football's greatest triumphs aren't wins
OKLAHOMA CITY – Ariana Luna broke the huddle, headed toward the line of scrimmage and immediately saw the fingers pointing.
They were coming from the other side of the line, from opposing players, and they were aimed at her. So were some comments.
“Easy,” a few said.
An easy target, the eighth grader is not.
But here’s what she is: a leader. She is a proud member of the Muscogee Creek Nation and the Indigenous Voices Youth Council. She is the student council vice president. And this season, she was the starting center for the Wheeler Middle School football team.
On the field, she showed that people doubted her at their own peril.
“That always made me more aggressive,” Ari said of opponents’ snide assumptions. “The more people they threw at me, the more people I thought I could hold back.”
During a week our state’s attention is focused on a Bedlam showdown for the ages, Ari Luna is a reminder most of football’s greatest triumphs don’t end with conference championships or playoff invitations.
They come in unexpected places like Wheeler, just south of downtown Oklahoma City, where nearly all the students come from economically disadvantaged families and are eligible for free or reduced lunches.
They happen on unexpected teams like the Tigers, who went almost two full years without playing, practicing or even doing off-season conditioning because of pandemic restrictions.
'She was just one of the linemen'
They happen because a bunch of boys gave a girl a chance — and she became one of them.
“She was just one of the linemen,” Wheeler head coach Stephen Drew said. “She was not Ariana, the girl.
“She’s Ariana, the football player.”
Ari Luna thought she’d be playing volleyball this fall.
That’s what she signed up to do. Even went to practice for a week or so.
But after volleyball practice finished, she would go outside to football practice to wait on her brother Lorenzo, a lineman. Ari had always liked football, having gone to games when she was younger, and as she watched, she realized something.
She went to see Coach Drew.
“Can I play?” she asked.
“Absolutely,” he said.
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Drew has always had an all-inclusive policy: anyone who wanted to play football — anyone — could try out for the team. But he gave Ari the same talk he has given other girls who wanted to play football, explaining the inherent risks of playing a collision sport as well as the possible challenges of being the only girl on the team.
“The boys at that age are kind of weird about things,” Drew told Ari. “They might act a little weird about it.”
Drew also told Ari that she wouldn’t be coddled.
Nothing promised.
Everything earned.
“From Day One, there was no hesitation on her part,” Drew said. “She just worked.”
Neither Ari nor her coaches had a sense of what position she might end up playing, but as the players did different drills and tried different skills, Drew quickly realized Ari belonged on the line.
“The way she was hitting bags and bodies,” he said, “we knew that she could get in the trenches.”
Ari had always roughhoused with her siblings, never shying away from that contact, that physicality. She carried that mentality onto the football field — she was never scared or afraid or hesitant.
“I liked hitting people,” she said with a smile.
And she didn’t mind getting hit either.
One of the first times she got hit hard in practice, she was going against one of the team’s biggest players.
“I got hit, and it hurt,” she said, “but I just wanted to keep going.”
One afternoon when it was particularly hot, Drew got worried about Ari. She’d taken a big hit and seemed a bit out of sorts. He wanted to make sure she wasn’t concussed or suffering any heat exhaustion, so he told her to go sit in the shade for a while.
She didn’t like his decision a bit.
“Coach,” she said, “I do not have a concussion.”
“Fine,” he said. “What’s Newton’s Theory of Relativity?”
That isn’t taught to students Ari’s age at Wheeler, and Drew knew that.
But later that evening, he got an email from Ari. She had gone online, found Newton’s theory and pasted it in an email to Drew.
“See, Coach,” she wrote, “I don’t have a concussion.”
She wasn’t going to let anything stop her from playing football.
'One of the best players out there'
Ari Luna was going to do more than play for Wheeler.
She was going to start.
Drew and his coaches had tried her at every position on the offensive and defensive lines, and while she would be used on defense, she would be the starting center on offense. Even though Wheeler had two boys who’d worked on the position, one even drilling a lot over the summer, Ari beat out both of them.
The coaches liked that she was coachable. When they would talk to her about fixing something in her stance or with her footwork, for example, she would look them in the eye, nod her head and get to work.
Her accountability was top notch, too. Never missed a practice. Always arrived on time.
But as much as anything, Ari became Wheeler’s starting center because she was the best.
“You need a center-quarterback exchange that’s on the money,” Drew said. “It was just an easy choice.”
And her teammates knew it.
The boys respected her from the jump. She did everything they did, lifting weights and running sprints and doing bear crawls the length of the field. But she also did things that stood out. Going hard every play. Refusing to tap the top of her helmet and signal to coaches that she needed to come out and get a rest.
Sure, the boys were surprised to see her on the field at first.
“But then when she started playing, she started becoming more of a leader,” fellow lineman Abraham Cossio said, “and honestly, she was one of the best players out there.”
Her brother Lorenzo said, “I’m really proud of her.”
Ari gives a lot of credit to Lorenzo. He played left guard, the spot right next to the center on the offensive line, but it wasn’t just that he was by her side the entire season. He told the rest of the boys that they shouldn’t take it easy on Ari. She had signed up to play football. She had to be treated the same.
She was thankful for that.
“It made me better,” she said. “If they would have taken it easy on me, I wouldn’t have gotten stronger.
“I wouldn’t have seen how much they could do to better me.”
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'Tons of little ones following her'
Ari Luna was scared before Wheeler’s first game.
“My body was shaking,” she said.
She laughed.
“But being with the team, they made me feel so comfortable,” she said. “How they reassured me I’d be OK, it all just made it better.”
Ari has rarely lacked confidence. Those who know her well say her family has laid a strong foundation. She is a leader at Wheeler, being elected vice president of the student council, and when the school district started a new youth council for Indigenous students this year, she was quick to apply.
Star Yellowfish, director of Native American Student Services in OKCPS, has seen Ari’s leadership. She isn’t afraid to speak up even as one of the council’s younger members. She wants not only to lead but to empower others to do the same.
“Whatever she wants to do as a Native woman, she can do,” Yellowfish said. “There are tons of women that have done those things before her, and there are tons of little ones following her, watching her, that will use her as a role model.”
Ari already had a platform.
Football gave her another.
Wheeler finished first in its division this season, even though it had only 25 players at the end of the season. Coach Drew believes Ari was a key reason why the team was able to keep having success.
“I hope whatever she accomplished this year springboards her into whatever it is that she wants to accomplish,” he said. “Go find something hard to do and go through it and be great at it.”
Ari is wrestling this winter for Wheeler, then plans to play football next fall at Southeast High School. It’ll be a big step up. Then again, it’s a big step up for every middle schooler.
But Ari has proven she isn’t afraid of challenges. Being the only girl on a middle school football team? Starting at one of the most important positions in a sport she never played before? Handling double teams and finger pointing and snide remarks from opponents?
Ari Luna answered all those questions.
Easily.
Jenni Carlson: Jenni can be reached at 405-475-4125 or jcarlson@oklahoman.com.