Katharine Anne "Katie" Hnida is an American football player who became the first woman to score in an NCAA Division I-A game, college football's highest level. She accomplished this as placekicker for the University of New Mexico Lobos on August 30, 2003. Hnida is the third woman to have scored in a college football game, after Liz Heaston, who played for NAIA Willamette University in 1997, and Ashley Martin, who played for NCAA Division I-AA Jacksonville State University in 2001. While at University of Colorado at Boulder in 1999 she became the second woman to dress for a Division I-A game,... and the first to do so for a bowl game. Hnida grew up in Littleton, Colorado. She attended Chatfield Senior High School near Littleton, where she was a member of the football team. She went 3 for 3 in field goal attempts, and 27 for 28 in extra point attempts in her senior year. She was a member of the varsity team and named one of America's "20 most influential teens" by Teen People magazine. Rick Reilly wrote a "Life of Reilly" column about her. After high school, Hnida enrolled at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
more