A heartwarming reunion of former players, coaches, staff, and others associated with a professional women’s football team that Toledo had in the 1980s is scheduled for Friday night.

The event, to be at St. Michael’s Center starting at 5 p.m., will bring together about 25 people who were part of the Toledo Furies, including 19 who were part of its 1984 national championship team. The center is part of Saint Michaels Byzantine Catholic Church, 4001 Navarre Ave., Oregon.

Some are coming as far away as Wyoming and Arizona. Most are now in their mid-50s to mid-70s, according to one of the event organizers, KC Carter, the placekicker on the 1983 and 1984 teams.

The gathering was first envisioned as one in which long-overdue rings and pendants would be presented to members of the 1984 team 35 years after its feat. But it blossomed into a reunion for anyone associated with it throughout the decade.

Family members, friends, and others in attendance are expected to push the total number of attendees beyond 100, Ms. Carter, who now lives in the Fulton County town of Delta, said.

“Finally, after all of this time, we're getting our rings,” she said. “There's a lot of pride and accomplishment.”

The Toledo Furies were a follow-up to the city’s first and most successful women’s professional football team, the Toledo Troopers, which won seven consecutive national championships from 1971 through 1977 and often shut out opponents, winning games by 30- to 40-point margins.

Both were part of the National Women's Football League.

The Toledo Troopers disbanded in 1979. The Toledo Furies began play in 1983. It played the rest of the decade, except for the 1986 season, then stopped play in 1989, when several players opted for a flag football league.

Several women played on both the Troopers and the Furies. But the first-year transition was a bit rocky because of the number of players who’d left or retired, and the number of newcomers who had to learn plays and football technique. The Furies weren’t totally starting from scratch, but there was a learning curve that first year, Ms. Carter said.

“That winning spirit came back,” Eunice White, 69, also of Delta, said.

Ms. White is one of those who played on both the Troopers and the Furies, the former from 1973 through 1979 and the latter in 1983 and 1984. She also taught and coached at Springfield High School in Holland for 35 years.

“These people we played football with have developed into self-sustaining members of society,” Ms. White, who played defensive end and defensive tackle, said. “Sports is more than about playing a game. It's about developing character.”

She said she was glad to be part of a national championship team with the Furies in her second year after that first year in which the team “had many who had never played organized football.”

The event begins with a social hour at 5 p.m., followed by dinner at 6 p.m., and the program starting at 7:30 p.m.

One of the speakers scheduled to talk is Linda Jefferson, a star running back who was the most famous of the Toledo Troopers.

Ms. Jefferson averaged more than 14 yards a carry for several seasons. Those who followed her said it seemed like she scored a touchdown one out of every three times she got the ball.

She is one of only four women inducted into the American Football Association Hall of Fame in Binghampton, N.Y. It is an enshrinement hall created in 1980 that describes itself as one that is “dedicated to the advancement and promotion of semi-pro/minor league football teams and leagues in the United States.”

Ms. Jefferson also was named the 1975 Athlete of the Year by womenSports, the first magazine dedicated exclusively to covering women in sports. Although now defunct, it was published by former tennis-star activist Billie Jean King and her former husband, Larry King.

A year later, in 1976, Ms. Jefferson was the league’s Player of the Year. She also appeared on the ABC television network’s Women Superstars competition that year, finishing fourth, and gained further attention as a guest on the popular TV game show, To Tell the Truth, and as a guest on The Dinah Shore Show.

The Toledo Troopers, as a team, was the first co-inductee of the Austin-based Women’s Football Foundation Hall of Fame, which began in 2014. The other co-inductee that first year was former Pittsburgh Steelers running back Franco Harris, for his contributions to promoting women in sports.

First Published October 25, 2019, 10:00 a.m.