When football practice started at Service High a couple months ago, Meghan Dotten and Taylor Bomar showed up at an adjacent field and started kicking a soccer ball around.
Their presence was calculated. The teenage girls were hoping to attract attention, and they did.
The Cougars needed a placekicker, and Dotten and Bomar were booting the ball with such accuracy and strength that assistant coach Numi Ilalio, watching from afar, was impressed. He sent quarterback J.J. Christy to get the girls and ask if they wanted to try out for the team.
That's when Dotten and Bomar, best friends and star soccer players, revealed their plan: Take us both, or don't take either of us.
"We're a package deal," Dotten said.
Not because either was afraid to be the only girl in a testosterone-filled locker room, nervous about going solo in the teenage-boy-bastion that is high school football.
Because they knew they'd want the company.
"Dude, football practices are three hours long," Dotten said. "We entertain each other."
And they help the Cougars win games. Service is 6-1 heading into its final regular-season game Saturday and, win or lose, will advance to next week's state playoffs.
Earlier this season, 16-year-old Bomar calmly entered a game against Chugiak with 10 seconds left and the score tied. The previous season, Service blew a similar situation when Chugiak blocked the potential game-winner. But Bomar was nonplussed. She nailed a 22-yard kick to lift the Cougars to a 30-27 victory.
"Everyone was saying, 'You just won the game for us!' and I just said, 'Oh.'
"We scored about 120 goals (in soccer) last season, so you get in the mode of not celebrating them," she said.
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