JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Growing up, Olivia Kuan's mom, Basia, used to take her out into the cul-de-sac to play football - two-hand touch football. It felt normal to Kuan. She'd grown up hearing her mom's stories of playing professional football with the Houston Herricanes.
OLIVIA KUAN: It wasn't until quite a bit later in life when I started to really put the pieces together that not everyone's mom played football. In fact, very few people's moms played football.
SUMMERS: Not only that, Kuan says. Kids at school didn't believe her that her mom played football. They, like a lot of people, believed pro football was just for men.
KUAN: That, you know, was the early onset of the frustration about the perception of women in football for me.
SUMMERS: Now Olivia Kuan has turned that childhood frustration into action, a documentary called "The Herricanes," all about the Houston Herricanes and the National Women's Football League of the 1970s.
KUAN: Yeah. The league was started by a fellow named Sid Friedman, and he kind of thought that the whole thing would be a bit of a spectacle, kind of like a circus act, maybe similar to the Harlem Globetrotters. And some tension formed between Sid and his vision and the women who showed up to play. They wanted to play real football - real tackle football - and he wanted something different.
So the players quickly spun away from Sid Friedman, and, eventually, the actual NWFL was formed in 1974. Two years after that was pretty much the height of the NWFL. And at that point, it was about 14 teams strong, and they were clusters of teams in the Ohio area, which included Pennsylvania and Michigan, and there was a cluster in California. And then there was, at last, the cluster in the South, which included Texas and Oklahoma.
SUMMERS: I have to say I am a person that absolutely loves football, and I clock more hours than I will admit right now watching NFL games on Sundays. And even, given all of that, this part of football history is one that I didn't know a whole lot about myself, even given the current spotlight that there is on women's sports. So I wonder, for you, why do you think it is that the National Women's Football League's history isn't well known?
KUAN: Well, don't worry. You're not alone. It comes down to the fact that these women were not accepted in the 1970s. It was really difficult to get media attention. It was really difficult to get butts in the seats. They did have a bit more attention on them in smaller municipalities, such as Tulsa, Oklahoma City. But in a big city like Houston, the Houston Herricanes were really struggling to get any attention when they were competing with the Houston Oilers or other professional men's sports.
SUMMERS: I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about the story of the Herricanes and your documentary. Even despite that early rocky start, the Herricanes - they kept going. The league keeps going. And the team and its players - they get better despite a really stunning lack of resources. Throughout the course of the documentary, we get to hear some of the incredible personal stories that these players told you about the team - what it meant to play. I wonder, is there one that sticks out in your memory that you could share with us?
KUAN: Yeah. My mom has always really valued her football-playing experience. But when I started talking to the other players of the Houston Herricanes, it was very clear that, to some of them, this was one of the most impactful experiences of their entire life. There was one woman who told me that this was where she found real love and had a sistership with her teammates that cannot be found anywhere else in her life.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "THE HERRICANES")
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: I would look forward to go to practice. I would look forward to go play that game. I would look forward to go to that club after that game. I look forward to be with my sisters.
KUAN: There's definitely a few women who talked about how they really needed to push themselves physically and how that created this determination within them that they carried all the way through their life today.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "THE HERRICANES")
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: It was special just having a group of women that wanted to play football and were willing to go out there and hit and get dirty and sweat and not to be afraid to say they were strong.
KUAN: And that's really one of the things that I think is the most powerful message about the women's sports movement in general. If we empower girls and women to participate in sports, it opens them up to leadership positions that they may not have been able to pursue otherwise. It's something that everyone can gain from.
SUMMERS: Olivia, this is a story about sports, but it's also a family story. You excavated all of these memories and dug into all of this history that forms the documentary with your mom, who, of course, had the firsthand experience. I wonder - did going through the yearslong process of putting together this documentary - did it all help you come to know your mother and her story differently?
KUAN: Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that was really nice about doing this project is that, in the beginning, it was just me and her working on it together. It really helped transform our relationship into a place where it was less mother and child and a little bit more eye to eye. As far as perception is concerned, I always have remembered her as being a very strong woman. And this has, if anything, only reinforced that.
SUMMERS: We've been speaking with Olivia Kuan, director of "The Herricanes." The film opens in Houston first, then across the country throughout the fall. Olivia, thank you so much.
KUAN: Yeah, thank you so much for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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