Germantown’s Mickey Grace is making history as a football coach while fulfilling her purpose in life

Football always found itself at the forefront of Mickey Grace’s life.

The Germantown native got her start as a kicker at Germantown High School. She grew up playing tennis but joined the football team because there weren’t many other sports offered. in her senior year, she tried defensive end but wanted to keep it a secret since she “didn’t want people to have their feelings about a girl playing.”

Even when she thought her time on the gridiron was over, Grace returned as a volunteer coach at Martin Luther King High School after the closure of her alma mater in 2013 because of budget cuts. Most Germantown students were moved to MLK, even though the schools were rivals.

Grace, who then was studying psychology at West Chester University, never thought of herself as a football coach, despite spending three years with MLK. It wasn’t until others referred to her as such that she realized that she could be one.

“I had wanted to coach, but I just didn’t call what I was doing coaching yet,” Grace said. “There was no place in my mind that existed that I could coach football as a woman; I could do this as a career; I could support my family and make a living from this thing that I love so much.”

Fast forward more than a decade, and Grace is entering her fourth year at UConn, which opened its season Saturday with a 59-13 rout of Central Connecticut State. She is considered the first woman to hold a coaching role in the FBS and has worked her way up from an offensive analyst and assistant wide receivers coach to an assistant defensive line coach and director of player development.

Football has given Grace a life she would have never imagined. She has traveled and lived in different states and worked for NFL teams, including the Washington Commanders, Miami Dolphins, and Tampa Bay Buccaneers. She was a defensive assistant at Dartmouth in 2021 when it won an Ivy League championship.

» READ MORE: Why are so many Philly-area football recruits committing to Syracuse? Camden’s own Fran Brown

Football also led to her meeting her husband, Kenny McClendon, the assistant head coach and defensive line coach at UConn. The two have been married for a year and welcomed a baby girl on July 7.

Her journey, however, wasn’t easy, and it still comes with challenges. Grace was a single mother, raising her elder daughter, and struggled to find a decent paying job in the field. She didn’t have any connections in the football world, which made it harder to get her foot in the door.

She often asked herself, “Do you want to do this?”

Something keeps pulling Grace toward the game.

Sure, winning feels great, but the real pull is getting to help young athletes grow.

“My life is a testament that whatever you want to do, you can do it,” she said. “You don’t have to pick one skill over another. You can encompass everything you love in your life into one, and, honestly, I never knew what my purpose in life was going to be. It was hidden in my passion. I’m passionate about impacting people.”

She remembers the last time she questioned her path.

“I was in Philadelphia,” she said. “I was in my apartment, just me and my daughter. … There was probably $8 in my bank account. But it’s funny, because although there was $8, we always had food. Our bills were always paid. We always had clothes. … I remember it was a crisp spring morning. I said, ‘We’ll never come to this table again. This choice will never be on the table again.’”

Grace was tired of bouncing around as a volunteer coach, from the Philly Phantomz to Temple, while bartending on the side. She later took a position at Mastery Charter North as a math teacher, which gave her some stability — and health insurance.

» READ MORE: Ciré Forman wanted to start a sports foundation. After her death at 21, her family is making it a reality. | from 2023

She also served as the defensive line coach and defensive coordinator for the school’s football team for four years under head coach John Davidson, who’s entering his 15th season with the program and is the principal at Mastery Charter Lenfest Campus. Grace called Davidson and Brandon Bing, a Philly native who played in the NFL and works as trainer for pro football players in the area. They are the catalysts to her career.

“All they did was just allow me to be in the spaces that I wanted to exist in,” she said. “I would not be who I am without their welcome. … Each of them did benefit from my work, but they allowed themselves to benefit from my work. People think that women in football is women’s progress. It’s not — it’s not female progress. It’s male progress. I was always who I was. I needed people to let me in.”

Davidson first met Grace while she played for Germantown and he was an assistant coach for George Washington. When they reconnected, it felt like a no-brainer to have her on staff.

“She always conducted herself like a professional,” Davidson said. “She learned how to be reflective as a leader and take feedback. … I think we tend to lean into gender as a criteria for success when it’s not. Why would I not hire a qualified, knowledgeable, skilled coach who can build relationships with players and work with a staff cohesively to better our program?”

» READ MORE: Meet Tom Cillo, the 58-year-old retired freshman playing on the Lycoming College football team

Grace recognized that it wasn’t players who had an issue with her as a coach. Most of the time, the negative comments came from outsiders, people who had nothing to do with football.

She says she experienced judgment from other coaches for being in those spaces but did her best to tune them out.

“Women get punished for what men choose to do,” Grace said. “We get punished for whatever victimization happened to us, so I made a decision very early that if I was going to choose to have a career in football that my name was going to mean hard work, my name is going to mean determination, to push through and fight back.

“I’m mixed-race, but the world sees me as a Black woman. … I’m married to a wonderful man, but I’ve always been heterosexual. I’ve always been super feminine. My favorite color is pink. Me and my daughter, we probably leave glitter trails in our wake. We’re as girlie as it comes. I’m not hypermasculine, as some assume.”

Dartmouth felt like a place where she belonged and marked the first time in her career where coaching was her only job. The program has been pushing for female coaches, and Grace was the third woman to be hired full-time.

However, the pay wasn’t nearly enough, and she was living with other assistant coaches. It didn’t feel like the right place to raise her daughter. Grace also wanted to work for an FBS program — Dartmouth competes in the FCS.

UConn brought her on, and she strived to bring her best every day — even when she was pregnant.

“I coached and ran football my entire pregnancy,” she said. “We’re off in July anyway. They were like, ‘Did you time this pregnancy to when you were off?’ I was like, ‘Yep,’ I didn’t want anyone to know I was pregnant because I wanted to finish. I wanted to do it well. I wanted to keep my job.”

Grace never wanted her gender to hinder her ability to coach.

Football has taken from her as much as it has given, she said, but she always trusted her abilities and knowledge, and nobody could take that away from her.

“This world has taken so much from me,“ Grace said. “But also has given me my family, given me my husband and my kids. I’m so grateful for the life that I have now.”