KEESHA BROOKS

Establishing Community Through Touchdowns and Tackles

"We hang out together; we spend time together outside of the field. We have to build a bond in order to trust each other. If I can't trust you there, I can't trust you at all."

Sitting in her office and chatting with her fellow co-workers, Keesha Brooks smiles. The conversation flows, and when the company’s potluck is brought up, Brooks jokes about having first dibs on the pasta salad. As she takes a bite of the sample size entree, her sweatshirt stands out against her co-workers’ business attire. It’s her 2013 Chicago Force Championship team sweatshirt, memorializing a year that will forever be engraved in Brooks’ mind.

For a little more than a decade, Keesha Brooks, a.k.a. Taz, has been an all-around athlete, no stranger to getting tough and showing off her tough spirit. When she's not spending her days in an office working as a social worker, she’s managed to play two professional sports in her downtime. In 1998, she played professional basketball for the Chicago Condors, an all-woman basketball team. And for the past 15 years, Brooks has played a big part on the Chicago Force football team.

“I’ve played offensive guard and defensive tackle,” Brooks says. “I love the challenge it gives me.”

Written by Monica Lofton, Edited by Samantha Stahl, Photography via Chicago Force Football Team

The Chicago Force was established 15 years ago, and Brooks has been there since the start. Now she walks away with numerous awards and takes pride in bringing the team to championships during her time as team captain from 2007-2010. In 2006, she was named offensive rookie of the year, and in 2013, the team won the national championship.

This past July, the Chicago Force played its last game of the season against the Boston Renegades. Instead of looking forward to the 2018 season, the team has stopped playing. Chicago Force--like other teams--gets funding from sponsors such as Athletico Physical Therapy, which donate money for uniforms, travel expenses and more. The team had other sponsors, like Miller Lite and DLG Management, but the funding was not enough for the team to continue into their next season.

While both women’s and men’s semi-professional football have the same rules, very few high schools and colleges offer the sport solely for women. However, one women’s football team stands out against the rest: the Lingerie Football Team, which originated from an alternative Super Bowl halftime special. After three years, the team turned into a 10-team lingerie football league. In 2013, the teams changed their name to the Legends Football League to try to move away from the lingerie uniforms. However, the players still wear those outfits today.

With a frown on her face, Brooks says getting compared to that league isn’t the best because it and the Chicago Force are two completely different organizations. While players in the lingerie league wear more revealing uniforms, Brooks and her teammates wear it all: shoulder pads and knee pads, to protective gear and compression shorts.

“It’s quite degrading if you ask me. I mean you can do what you want with your body, that’s your right. However, I can't see how you go half-naked and then turn around and want people to treat you with respect. It really doesn’t make sense to me,” Brooks says.

While the lingerie league gets advertised on TV and is shown on sports channels, other women's football teams rarely make an appearance on the big screen. George Middleton, a Naperville resident, says he was shocked to discover the Chicago Force football team. After watching videos and looking at pictures on the team's website, Middleton was ecstatic.

“It’s amazing!” Middleton says. “I always watched the lingerie football teams because they are advertised on TV sometimes. I knew woman played football but not to this extent. I wish they would show some of the games on a network so they can get the support they really deserve.”

During her time with Chicago Force, Brooks has taken on the role of “big sister,” according to her coach, John Konecki. He recalls her presence on the field as “tough love.”

“She wasn’t afraid to get in your face and say when you messed up and tell you what you need to fix,” Konecki says. “Then after the game, she would come to you and help you. She had tunnel vision on the field. She wanted that W no matter what.”

Konecki recalls a time where Brooks was on the field, and she let a teammate down in a game winning play. He says it was heartbreaking to see how Brooks reacted to the missed play.

“She let an opposing player get through, and the quarterback was tackled pretty hard,” he says. “She had this lifeless look on her face; it was like someone had told her someone close to her had died. She lost by seven points and everyone was telling her she did her best, but she felt like she didn’t. She took the loss hard. The next game, however, it was like she turned into an animal. She wanted to make up for that loss and she did.”

After hearing what her coach said about her, Brooks grins.

“Hearing that makes my heart smile,” she says.

Brooks took her role seriously, as the big sister and as the team captain. She calls her teammates a “band of sisters.”

“We hang out together; we spend time together outside of the field. We have to build a bond in order to trust each other. If I can’t trust you there, I can’t trust you at all.”

However, only a few moments later, Brooks lets out a sigh as she recalls her missed play.

“I was on point; I thought I had it,” Brooks says. “[The other player] was fast, light on her feet, and slipped right past me. I felt like I let my quarterback down. I let myself down. After the game, I went to her and asked her was she OK, and she smiled, laughed and said, ‘I’m good, girl.’ We both chuckled and walked out together.”

Besides being a beast on the field, Brooks is also tough when she’s working her day job.

She spends her days as a social worker at a non-profit called Unity Parenting and Counseling Inc., which specializes in parenting and counseling. Her main responsibility is to provide services in the areas of foster care, violence prevention and in-home parenting training.

“I wanted to be a voice to the kid that doesn’t have a voice,” Brooks says. “I love kids, and I want to help them in any way that I can, be it helping them stay off the streets or finding safe environments for them to thrive and be successful in.”

Brooks says football helps her cope with the stress of her job. Having to step in and gain control of an out-of-hand situation can be hard. Brooks says she thinks about all the “what ifs” when she tries to apply the best possible solution for each case she takes on.

“Football has given me the OK to leave the workload behind and refill my cup for the next morning,” Brooks says.

As her years of playing football replay in her mind, Brooks can’t see herself being a coach in the near future. Having played the sport for as she long she has, she has faith that the team can find a sponsor and head back onto the field.

“I’m still too much of a player,” Brooks says. “I still got that player mentality.”