The snap was low, but Mary Ellen Wiley had been preparing for this moment for a full season’s worth of practices.
She caught the football and punted it 32 yards.
The punt, fumbled by the other team, was recovered by Wade Wygal, and Tom Coon scored on the next play.
This was homecoming, Nov. 7, 1980, when the Coronado Islanders took on Montgomery, one of the big teams in the Metro League.
Wiley, the first-ever female player on the CHS football team, remembers that play like it was yesterday.
“It was really exciting. They gave me my little skulls that I got to put on the back of my helmet and I got a letter,” Wiley said, reminiscence written all over her face.
Always playing sports
Wiley said she grew up playing every sport that her older brother Ken roped her into, football included.
She was one of the first girls to play Little League in Coronado in 1975 after getting bored of throwing underhand for the Bobby Sox softball team.
In high school, softball and basketball were her two main sports, but she also was a surfer and skateboarder on the side.
Her brother Ken, who was a walk-on kicker at the University of Southern California and played for CHS, always practiced kicking at Cutler Field in Coronado, she said.
Wiley happily tagged along to shag balls for him and would kick them back, simply because she loved the sport.
From team manager to punter
So for her senior year, Wiley decided to be a team manager.
“I’m just kind of dragging the equipment around and then start kicking it back and forth to them,” Wiley said. “And of course, all the guys knew that I was such a tomboy and always liked to play all of those sports. Then they just said, ‘you should try out.’”
Then they just said, ‘you should try out.'”
-Mary Ellen Wiley.
So, she joined the team as the first ever-female player at CHS.
Today, the tradition continues as Coronado High has Lindsey Balsley, also a kicker, and Emilia Alpert, an inside linebacker and running back, on the team.
Wiley said that the few people who may not have been entirely receptive to the idea of a female player gave her no grief and just left her alone. And, most everybody was supportive of her decision at the time, she said.
Coon, captain of the 1980 team and a friend of Wiley, said he has known Mary Ellen (who he refers to as Mel) since the first grade or for over 50 years. And he recalls when she started playing.
“When Mel decided to join the team, I’d say we were all pretty excited,” Coon said. “Many of us had known her since elementary school where she excelled in all sports. She has always been a true competitor and pushed a lot of the boys to be their best.”
“She has always been a true competitor and pushed a lot of the boys to be their best.”
Tom Coon on Mary Ellen Wiley
He too remembers her shining moment in the homecoming game against Montgomery.
‘I love the sport’
That play was the one time Wiley got on the field in a game, but she said she also had a lot of fun in practices.
Sometimes, she said, she would step in as an extra defensive player in addition to practicing punting.
“I didn’t do it for notoriety, but just because I love the sport,” Wiley said.
In a scrapbook full of old football keepsakes, Wiley has an article clipping that highlights her as one of three female football players in the entire state of California at the time.
The anomaly of her joining an all-male sport is emphasized by the team roster that she also has saved in the scrapbook.
In it, her name reads “M.E. Wiley” to camouflage her full name, “Mary Ellen.”
Wiley went on to City College to play on the softball team and then transferred to San Diego State University and played intramural basketball.
Still catching waves
But surfing, a sport she started in 1974, is still her true passion.
Wiley regularly surfs today.
However, the sewage problem in Coronado and in Imperial Beach has kept her from the waves recently.
She has spent 20 years of her life doing surf competitions and is also currently in the Coronado ukulele club.
A photo of her surfing is even featured on the cover of the August 2023 issue of Crown City Magazine.
Anytime the memory of her football headshot pops up on her facebook screen, Wiley said it puts a big smile on her face to remember that year.
She said she is looking forward to going to a CHS football game to cheer on the two current players: Balsley and Alpert.
