Female Soccer Player Mo Isom Tries Out For LSU Kicker

TALENT

Morlan “Mo” Isom is not your typical homecoming queen nor your normal LSU soccer star. Isom is dead set on becoming a kicker on the LSU football team.

Isom, a star goalkeeper on the LSU soccer team from 2008-11, became the first female student-athlete to be named LSU’s homecoming queen last fall. Now she wants to be LSU’s first female football player. She went through a walk-on tryout with other prospective kickers Tuesday during the Tigers spring drills.

“People’s first presumption about this is that it’s a media stunt or some attempt for attention and glory,” Isom said. “That couldn’t be any farther from the truth. I feel it was a goal God placed in my heart. It’s just something I want to do.”

If she makes the LSU team, Isom will become the first female kicker at a major college since 2003 when Katie Hinda kicked two extra points for New Mexico against Texas State, becoming the first female to score in a major college game.

Isom, who is six feet tall, kicked a 51-yard field goal on the LSU practice field while working on her own with LSU kickers Brad Wing and Drew Alleman last August and has even scored a goal on the pitch 90 yards out.

Isom, who has a year of eligibility remaining in athletics at LSU according to the NCAA rule giving student-athletes five years to play four, began training as a kicker for football in January of 2011.

Head football coach Les Miles says he has no objections in playing her “If she gave us an opportunity and an advantage, and I mean add an advantage, then certainly we would consider that. The good thing about it is she’s an athlete. She’s been through team before. She understands the commitment. I would have much less reservation with her than I would any number of other people that frankly didn’t know what they were getting into. But the real interesting thing is it has to be an advantage obtained.”

Miles said he will likely not make any final decisions about adding walk-on kickers until August when preseason practices begin. LSU has two kickers and a punter on scholarship.