After receiving six college football scholarship offers, Antoinette "Toni" Harri/s has signed a letter of intent to play football for Missouri's Central Methodist University and made history while doing it.


The 22-year-old is now "the first female skill position play/er to sign a letter of intent to play college football on a scholarship," Central Methodist said on its website. She will also become the school's f/irst female football player.


Harris, a free safet/y and an honors student at East Los Angeles Junior College, is the second woman to receive a college football scholarship. Arizona kicker Becca Longo became the first in 2017 when she signed to play at Colorado's Adams State Universit/y.

"Toni Harris has shown great resolve in her journey and quest to be a college football player," Bobby Godinez, who coached Harris at East LA College, said in a statement from CMU.


"She has shown her/self to be a great teammate here at East Los Angeles College and a great member of this community. We all wish her the best in her j/ourney beyond ELAC."

That journey included growing up in foster care, being adopted at age 13, and overcoming ovarian ca/ncer, which caused her to lose half her body weight after being d/iagnosed at 18. Harris went on to become the first person in her family to graduate from high sch/ool and attend college, plus the first woman to play on East LA College's football team.

"My biggest pet peeve is people telling me th/at I can't," N B C News reports Harris saying. "So I have to prove them wrong."


Harris' ultimate goal is to become the first woman to pla/y in the National Football League. "If it doesn't happen, I can just pave the way for another little girl to come out and p/lay -- or even start a women's NFL," Harris said.

Congratulations, Toni! Keep paving the way!


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