“They get so confused sometimes when they see that it’s a woman who’s doing this,” Lily Godwin ’26 said a couple months back. She was doing a TV interview with local station KING5 about an accomplishment like no other— becoming the first woman to make an unassisted tackle in NCAA football history.
On Oct. 21, 2023, at Peyton Field, the Loggers were playing Linfield when the visiting team’s fullback was coming up the middle. Suddenly Godwin, a sophomore linebacker, was there, and—in quick succession—she pounced, the Wildcats fullback went down, and history was made. The whole stadium erupted. “I was just really focused on making sure I was positioned right, making sure I knew exactly what my job was, making sure I had all my responsibilities covered,” she told ABC News, which did a six-minute national story on her big moment.
A few days afterward, the NCAA chimed in on Instagram: “Leaving her lasting legacy, Lily Godwin is the first female in @pugetsoundfootball history and is believed to be the first female in NCAA history to record a solo tackle in a game!”
