Trending:
- From the moment Elena Easley first watched Taylor Swift cheer on her boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, she was hooked on football
- Recently, Elena was playing football at school during recess when a boy in her class came up to her and told her that, because she is a girl, she can’t play the sport
- So, she and her mom decided to post about it on TikTok, where it’s gone viral
From the moment Elena Easley first watched Taylor Swift cheer on her boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, she was hooked. During the season, the 8-year-old and her mom, Stephanie, who live in Minnesota, would sit on their couch every single week to watch the Chiefs play.
“Even though we have two brothers and a husband, it was the girls who watched football every week, and we started liking football — especially her,” Stephanie, 33, tells PEOPLE exclusively.
Recently, Elena was playing football at school during recess when a boy in her class came up to her and told her that, because she is a girl, she can’t play the sport. Although this wasn’t the first time something like this had happened, this time the boy took it further: He told her that she couldn’t grow up to play football and that she should stop playing.
Despite being upset in the moment, Elena responded to her classmate. “You’re wrong because girls do play football, and there are two girls playing right now,” she recalls telling him. Later, when she got home from school and Stephanie asked her how her day was, Elena shared what had happened during recess.
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“She told me about recess, and in our house, we feel our feelings,” Stephanie says. “Then I asked her, ‘What are we going to do about it now?’ And she told me she wanted to make a video to see if there are other girls who play football out there. So, she decided she wanted to make a TikTok.”
“We thought we were already done with our feelings. We had dried our tears. But when she made the video, her feelings kind of came out again,” her mom adds. “Afterward, we checked, ‘Do we still want to post the video? Do we want to make another one?’ And she didn’t want to make another one. She said, ‘Nope, go ahead and post it, Mom.’ ”
Stephanie warned her daughter that the video probably wouldn’t go very far. But as Elena tells PEOPLE in the interview, her mom was “wrong.”
Since posting, the video has amassed more than 3 million views and received 25,000 comments, including from the Chiefs, rugby star Ilona Maher, who dueted the video, and Nana Olavuo, a Finnish football player on the Kansas City Glory, who invited Elena and her family to Kansas City for a game. When Stephanie told her daughter the news, Elena bounced up and down and cried tears of joy.
“What’s been super cool is seeing all the little girls who have reached out and told me that they feel inspired by something Elena did,” the mom shares. “They said they were going to quit but are now sick and tired of hearing that they can’t play. They said that if Elena can keep going, they can keep going too.”
“But it’s also broken my heart, just seeing people comment, ‘I wish my parents would’ve been this way to me,’ and I’m like, ‘Wait a minute, isn’t that our freaking job?’ ” she continues. “The bare minimum to support our children?”
Last week, Elena and her family flew out to Kansas City for the Kansas City Glory’s football game. While there, the family got a tour of Arrowhead Stadium, where the Chiefs play, and even got to run out of the tunnel where the players do. Elena threw her ball down the field and posted, saying, “Girls can play football.”
“I was like ‘Yes, queen,’ ” Stephanie says, recalling how she felt watching her daughter in that moment. For Elena, who’s never been to an NFL game, it was an out-of-this-world experience.
“She realizes that all this excitement and happiness that’s happening to her is not just hers,” Stephanie adds. “It’s bigger than her. There are so many other little girls who have heard this and deserve better.”
But for the football lover, the best part of the visit came at the end of the game, after the Glory won. “Nana ran up to me and everyone started picking me up,” Elena says. “She said that I’m lucky, and they’re going to call me every single game.”
“One day when I’m out there playing, I want to find a little girl who loves football and invite her to a game just like I was,” Elena adds. “If you like football or basketball or soccer or any type of sport, just go ahead and believe in yourself and do it.”
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