Life has a way of knocking people down.

Raymond Chandler was a promising oil executive until he got knocked down by his company and lost his job. He got knocked down hard. He got back up and became one of the most influential mystery writers of his time. Without Raymond Chandler, Humphrey Bogart wouldn’t have become the epitome of the hard-boiled detective in “The Maltese Falcon”.

Billie Burke was a retired vaudeville stage performer until she got knocked down and lost her life savings in the stock market crash of 1929. She got back up, too. You know her as Glinda, the Good Witch of the North.

Sometimes getting knocked down is the best thing that can ever happen to somebody.

Monique Gaxiola has been knocked down. She has been knocked down a lot.

You see, Monique Gaxiola was born with a problem. A very serious one. She wasn’t born a boy. It isn’t that she wanted to be a boy; it’s just that when you’re the only sister to four brothers your options for playmates are a little limited.

She had the dolls, and the dresses, and the tea parties. She had pink bows and lace. She had stuffed animals with boo-boos that she would carefully bandage and kiss to make better. But playing by yourself can get a little boring, and her brothers were out in the yard kicking a ball around and knocking each other down and running and yelling and laughing and … well… having fun the way boys do when there’s a ball and a goal and made-up rules to a made-up game they created themselves; something they called “football”.

Monique wanted to play, too. She went outside to join in the game.

Brothers have a unique system of justice for dealing with an annoying sister who is in the way when there’s a football game to be played. It wasn’t that they were cruel. It wasn’t that they didn’t love her. It’s just that, well, boys only know how to be boys. They didn’t know how to play with a sister. They told her to leave but she wouldn’t. So, they did what boys do. They played with her like she was a boy.

Little Monique, the cute raven-haired girl with the dark, soulful eyes and lace-trimmed dress, soon learned what it meant to play football with the boys. She had four teachers to give her lessons in the School of Hard Knocks. She learned that you get knocked down. She learned that sometimes it hurts to get knocked down. She learned that there’s no point in crying about getting knocked down, because if nothing is bleeding, broken, or bruised, boys don’t care. That’s football.

She went back inside the house to play with her dolls.

She got bored.

She went back outside to play with her brothers. They were more fun.

When she was five years old her parents enrolled her in a sports league. She wanted to play football– she would tell her brothers that she would be the first girl to play in the NFL – but there weren’t any football teams for a cute little raven-haired girl with dark soulful eyes. She couldn’t play football, so she played soccer.

Monique’s athletic ability was recognized by her soccer coaches quickly, and she enjoyed playing the game. Running around the field was fun. She didn’t cry (too much) when she fell down. She always got back up and kept playing. Her brothers had taught her well indeed.

As she got older, she got better. In high school she made varsity in four sports; soccer, cross country, cheerleading, and track and field. But she loved football, so she decided to try-out for the football team. After all, if she was going to play in the NFL, she would need to learn the game for real. She went to try-outs despite the laughing naysayers in her class who told her it was only for boys. She put on the helmet and the pads and got ready to play, even though she was a girl.

The coaches were impressed with the precocious raven-haired teenager. She could kick. She could kick better than a boy. She made it onto the junior varsity tackle football team as their placekicker. She was tough enough to handle the rough play and could make a tackle if she had to. After all, she had learned at an early age that sometimes you get knocked down, and sometimes getting knocked down hurts, and if you do get knocked down, there’s no point in crying about it unless something is bleeding, broken, or bruised. That’s football.

She still played soccer. She was good at it. She was so good at it that she qualified for the U-19 Mexico national futbol team. She was so good that she played on the U-20 Mexico national futbol team while enrolled at a local city college. She then transferred to the University of Southern California and was on the team that won the 2007 NCAA National Championship. Yes, the National Championship.

But Monique got knocked down bad half-way through her first year of college. It hurt. This time, something was broken, bleeding, and bruised. For once, this time, it was ok to cry.

It was the medial collateral ligament in her knee; her kicking knee.

Soccer is a rough sport. All of the kicking, twisting, jumping, and spinning had caught up to her; all of those years of other girls kicking at her legs. She had to take some time off to let it heal. No soccer for the rest of the season.

Time passed. Monique started feeling better. She couldn’t play soccer, so she earned her way onto the Competition Cheer Squad at USC where the selection committee was impressed with the raven-haired young lady with the dark eyes. For the rest of the year she danced and wore ribbons and bows and lace and displayed her athletic ability to throngs of cheering fans. She liked the energy of the crowd. It was exciting. But it wasn’t the same. She wanted to play again.

With her knee feeling better, she started playing semi-pro soccer again as a way to prepare for her final college season. And then she got hurt again. It was the same knee. She thought it was just a re-injury to her MCL. More healing; more waiting. She lost her senior year of college sports.

After graduation she went back to playing semi-pro soccer, hoping to earn her way up to a professional position, but her dream was gone. Everything she had wanted since the age of five had disappeared underneath a swollen kneecap. She was done.

She needed some time to think.

She got back up.

Soccer was out of the question.

But there was the LFL.

It was football. She had played it with her brothers when she was growing up. She had been the placekicker on her high school junior varsity team. She loved the sport. She loved it more than soccer, the sport at which she had been so good.

It was football, but with a feminine twist. The uniforms were cute, not at all like the boys’. She could wear pink bows and lace trim. She could style her hair. She could wear make-up and be a girl and play football; honest to goodness tackle football. There would be music and a crowd. It would be exciting. It would be as close to the NFL game-day atmosphere as she could get. And there was that promise she had made to her brothers when they were kids playing in the yard together and knocking each other down. Finally, their sister was getting a chance to be a professional football player.

She went to try-outs. She took her place in line to do the drills. She worked hard and pushed herself. She wanted to show everyone that she could play football. She went home wondering if she had made the team. Later, she got a phone call. She was a member of the Los Angeles Temptation.

Training camp started. She started practicing with her new teammates and perfecting her skills. Things were going great until she got knocked down again. It was her knee. This time it was bad; really, really bad.

The MRI revealed an old ACL tear. It was the injury she’d sustained her junior year of college. She’d been playing on a bad ligament all this time without knowing it.

She had a choice: surgery and a recuperation period that would cause her to miss the entire football season, or play with a mechanical knee brace.

Monique had spent too many seasons on the sidelines at USC watching her teammates play. She was tired of waiting for her chance. She wanted to play now. She decided to wear the brace.

Now the raven-haired young woman with the dark soulful eyes and lace-trimmed uniform is shutting down offenses. She’s making tackles in the open field. She’s getting knocked down, and doing some knocking down of her own. She’s playing honest to goodness tackle football, just like she told her brothers she would.

“The LFL is about athletic and beautiful women all mixed into one. I appreciate the LFL giving me the opportunity to showcase my football skills because I’ve been an athlete my entire life.”

And she’s become a bit of a celebrity, this attractive young woman with the raven-black hair and lovely dark eyes. People see her and know she’s a football player.

“Guys will come up to me and ask if I play for the LFL because they recognize me. It’s quite exciting and flattering at the same time and I love it.”

Sometimes you get knocked down. Sport is about getting back up after you’ve been knocked down. Sport is about learning that there’s no use crying about getting knocked down unless you’re bleeding, broken, or bruised. And even then, you have to get back up because that’s what sport is about. It’s not about giving up. It’s about getting up, because sometimes getting knocked down can be the best thing to happen to you. That’s sport.

“I believe the sky is the limit. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you can’t, because you can. Take all the negative people in your life and use it as a motivational tool. That is what I have done and is the reason as to why I have been such a successful athlete. You can be just as strong as the boys as long as you work hard and are dedicated. Trust me. I’ve proven it!”

Yes she has.

Welcome to the All-Whigham Team, Monique.

Long live sport.