Loveless makes history kicking points for Avon football team

Avon’s Anna Loveless is the first girl to score a point for the Falcon football team. She kicked three extra points in Friday’s win over Northwest Catholic.

AVON – It’s not unusual to find Avon High senior Anna Loveless kicking a ball.

However, it was different to find Loveless booting a football during physical education class earlier this fall. Her skill at putting the football through the uprights caught the attention of some of her classmates who play on the Avon High football team.

“I was kicking in gym class and I look back and the boys are recording me and then they sent it to the coach (Brendan Smith),” she said.

Loveless spent the past three seasons on the girls soccer varsity team, scoring 16 goals in three seasons, including eight as a sophomore in 2020. But she decided not to play soccer this fall.

When boys from the football approached her, she was willing to give it a shot.

“I said why not? I am not playing any sport right now,” Loveless said. “I wanted to try something new.”

Loveless became the first girl in the team’s long history to score a point in a game when she converted three extra points in Friday’s 47-15 win over Northwest Catholic on the turf field. Avon’s first varsity football team hit the field in 1960, just two years after the school opened.

Her first extra point attempt of the game was wide but she converted on 19-yard kick after a Cole Milardo touchdown run with 6:36 remaining in the first quarter. She added a second extra point after Connor Lavore’s seven-yard run with 11:22 gone in the second quarter.

She was 3-for-6 on extra points in the game.

“I knew once that first one went through (the uprights), she would be good after that,” Smith said. “The more she kicks in games, the most we’ll back it up and get those field goals going.”

Loveless follows through on a PAT attempt in last Friday’s win over Northwest Catholic.

Smith says that Loveless has good range but there is a bit of an adjustment coming from soccer to the football field.

“I think the biggest thing is to get comfortable doing it against a rush,” Smith said. “There is nothing like kicking the ball with 11 kids screaming at you. She’s a great kicker when she is out there on the field by herself.”

Loveless made her varsity debut two weeks earlier in a 24-6 win over Bristol Eastern. She missed two PAT attempts in that game.

“She has it,” Smith said. “She will hit a lot for us this year. I can tell.”

There have been girls participating as kickers on state teams.

According to the Connecticut High School Football Record Book, Andrea Lund of Kennedy in Waterbury was the first known female participant in a state varsity game in November 1994, kicking an extra point against Seymour. The first field goal came from NFA’s Elisa Formiglio against Bacon Academy in 2012.

North Haven’s Sabrina Fronte scored a girls state-record 86 points in 2015 with 77 PATs and three field goals that season, including a state record 32-yard field goal.