Taylor Crout and Haley Van Voorhis have taken the field defensively for Fitchburg State and Shenandoah this season. Fitchburg, Shenandoah athletics photos

Big news was made Saturday when Haley Van Voorhis took the field at safety for Shenandoah, but it turns out, Taylor Crout played at corner for Fitchburg State two weeks earlier. 

And that wasn't the end of it, or the beginning of it. We are often fond of saying that everything happens in Division III football. In this case, it had already happened, perhaps multiple times, and nobody had made a big deal out of it.

It happened in 2021, in fact, when Maria del Carmen Sacristan Benjet took the field for the last two snaps of WPI's win against Coast Guard.

Perhaps this is the first time a woman played a non-kicker position in @NCAA football? This is @WPIFootball in 2021, with Maria del Carmen Sacristan Benjet coming in for the last two snaps of a 38-6 win against Coast Guard on Senior Day, 11/6/21. #d3fb https://t.co/JzwMJ74BJg pic.twitter.com/uiiPsamJ7W

— D3football.com (@d3football) September 25, 2023

Perhaps there are even more out there. 

Crout, who joined Fitchburg this season after starting her career at Puget Sound, got onto the field on Sept. 9 in the fourth quarter of the Falcons' game against Castleton State. That would make her the first reported woman to play NCAA football at a position other than kicker. Van Voorhis got into Shenandoah's game on Saturday, Sept. 23, against Juniata.

The two even had similar beginnings, with Crout playing a handful of snaps and getting credited with an assisted tackle, and Van Voorhis registering a quarterback hurry, helping force a fourth down.

Division III has been home to a number of female placekickers, perhaps none more successful than Brittany Ryan of Lebanon Valley, who kicked 82 PATs and six field goals during her time with the Flying Dutchmen. She is, at last check, the NCAA’s all-time scoring leader among female kickers with 100. And the first woman to kick in a college football game, Liz Heaston, did so for Willamette in 1997. 

And Crout is not even the first woman to play for Fitchburg State. Linnea D’Acchille previously suited up as a kicker for the Falcons, converting 17 of 20 extra points in her career from 2019-2022.