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Nothing Trained Them For The Stench

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By SCOTT PURKS Tribune correspondent

Published: October 12, 2007

TAMPA - My goodness, the stench was lethal.

'What I'm saying is that the stink could kill bugs - at the very least,' Siara Outland said. 'I walked in that locker room and I thought I might die. My eyes were watering and I had to run out.'
Ericka Leslie said, 'It was so bad that I was coughing and I seriously had to ask myself if I could do this job as a Middleton football team manager.'

Outland returned to the locker room with a box - 'Not a can, mind you, but a box of air fresheners,' she said - and she sprayed.

In the end, Outland said, 'the stank won,' but she and Leslie remained determined to build up their 'immunities' to the stench, because being a sports trainer was their life ambition. And that's why every day the past year, Outland and Leslie, along with senior Shandrea Warren, have massaged cramps, filled water jugs and done whatever else they could to help the stinky football players.

'Stink?' Middleton lineman Cortez Young said. 'I love the smell. Smells like football.'

Outland said, 'See, it's a good thing the girls are there to add 'a woman's touch.'' Otherwise the locker room would smell that much worse, the water would be hot, the game-day jerseys wouldn't be as neatly folded and the taping wouldn't have as much tender-loving care.

Young said he couldn't be any more appreciative and respectful of the girls, and as far as he was concerned, 'Their names should be on our roster. I mean nobody is more dedicated than them.'

Consider this: On game nights, Leslie leaves the sideline with 2 minutes remaining in the half, changes into her marching band uniform, performs on her clarinet, changes back into the collared trainer's shirt and returns to the field.

Then, after the final horn sounds, at least in the case of away games, she hops back on the football team bus, for as she puts it, 'A long, incredibly stinky ride home.'

'Ah yes,' Outland said, 'the stink ... the one thing our womanly touch has yet to overcome.'

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