Damaja Jones conducts offseason workouts for the Helix High football team at 6:30 a.m., starting in January.
“It’s open to the whole school,” said Jones, who has been the head coach at the San Diego area school since 2022.
Many students express interest. Very few actually show up.
Aubrey Laue did, starting in January 2023, eager to make the varsity roster after playing on the JV team the year before. So she showed up every morning. The only female in the room.
“She did it,” Jones said. “And the rest is history.”
Laue was a third-string kicker in 2023 as a junior and didn’t get many opportunities beyond occasional PATs and kickoffs, only after games got out of hand. This year, however, she is in a starting role after beating out two other kickers in a preseason competition.
“Growing up, one of my best friends’ older brother, he kicked in high school, and we were both soccer players growing up,” Laue said. “So we made a promise to each other, like, ‘Oh, we’ll both kick in high school,’ kind of as a joke. And then I followed through with it.”
Last month — in her finest moment yet — Laue drilled a 27-yard field goal with 23 seconds remaining to lift Helix to a Homecoming victory over Madison.
What a story!! @HelixFootball kicker Aubrey Laue gets the game winning field goal with 23 seconds left. Her team takes the 23-20 win to “Aubrey” chants on homecoming night. Sports are awesome! pic.twitter.com/spcey4MJgQ
— Allison Edmonds (@aedmondstv) September 14, 2024
“I was talking to one of the (Helix) coaches the other day,” said Laue, who is believed to be the only female starter this year in the San Diego section of the CIF. “And (he) was saying: ‘You’re a player. You actually are a football player. You’re not just a girl who plays football; you’re a football player.’
“So I guess that’s kind of what I’m hoping (for). (That) I’m not just gonna be the girl that was just on the team to just be on the team. I’m actually on the team. And actually playing.”
And this isn’t at some small school that struggles to field a team. Helix is the alma mater of former USC star and Heisman Trophy winner Reggie Bush, former NFL quarterback Alex Smith and former UCLA and Colorado coach Karl Dorrell, to name a few. The Highlanders are down this year — 2-3 through five games — but they are one of California’s blue-blood programs.
Somewhere in the Laue family archives, there’s a photo of Aubrey as a young girl wearing a football jersey and throwing her hands up, signaling a touchdown.
Laue has loved football for as long as she can remember.
But before she tried out for the Helix team, she first had to make sure she knew how to kick a football. Up until a few years ago, she’d only kicked soccer balls as a goalie.
“It was definitely a little bit different,” Laue said. “I just went out one day by myself just to see how it was, and then I started going to a kicking coach. I started doing private lessons and stuff, and then I just started getting used to it and getting better at it.”
Laue’s current range is about 40 yards. But on Homecoming night, she was crushed when she missed an extra point earlier in the game.
“She beat herself up more than anything,” Jones said. “It’s interesting because I asked her, like, ‘Hey, what happened?’ And she didn’t blame the snap, she didn’t blame the hold; she didn’t blame anything. She said, ‘Coach, I just hit it too far left.’”
Helix believed it had scored the game-winning touchdown on a fourth-and-short play in the final seconds, but it was negated for a holding call. Jones had a decision to make with the score tied at 20-20.
“We had to move it back to the 10,” Jones said. “And I was like, ‘Well, it’s fourth-and-10. I know Aubrey’s range.’ I said, ‘You know what? We’re kicking a field goal. We’re gonna give her (a chance).’”
As Laue prepared herself to take the field, the nerves started to creep in. She knew that if she hadn’t missed that extra point earlier in the game, Helix would have been ahead 21-20 and wouldn’t have needed any late-game heroics.
When she trotted onto the field, she heard screams from the crowd — from the opposition and from the Helix fans, who were chanting her name in unison.
Laue took a deep breath and blocked out the noise.
“Before I went out there, my holder was like, ‘Oh, you got this. This is nothing.’ He kind of hyped me up and stuff,” she said. “I’m like, ‘OK. It’s just like practice. I can do this. There’s no difference.’”
Laue immediately knew her kick was good. She almost fell over when her teammates mobbed her, jumping up and down all around her to celebrate the biggest moment of her career. As she skipped off the field with her pink mouth guard still in place and her blonde pigtails whipping in the wind, the pep band fired up the fight song and Helix’s coaching staff waited on the sidelines, ready to celebrate.
“She’s our player, and we love her,” Jones said.
It remains Laue’s only field goal attempt of the season to date.
“I’m so proud of her,” said Evan Arapostathis, a former NFL punter and Helix alum who now works with specialists on the football team.
“You have no idea.”
Last summer, Laue told Jones she needed to miss a few days of offseason workouts.
“As a coach,” Jones said, “I was like, ‘Why are you missing?’”
That’s when Laue opened up about her medical condition.
“I have a congenital heart disease,” she said. “So for me, basically, I was born with holes in my heart.”
Laue had her first heart procedure at age 1. Because of her condition, her oxygenated and deoxygenated blood would mix, she said, meaning her heart wouldn’t have enough oxygen when it pumped out blood to the rest of her body.
She wore a heart monitor as a toddler and visited a cardiologist monthly. When she was 3, she had a second catheter procedure to help fix the holes but needed emergency open-heart surgery a week later when her mother noticed she was urinating blood the color of black coffee.
Doctors were able to manually patch Laue’s holes. She now visits her cardiologist every other year for checkups.
Last summer was her final time as a camper at Camp del Corazon, a five-day, free-of-charge camp on the California coast for children ages 7 through 17 with heart disease. That’s why she needed a few days off from football workouts.
Laue initially didn’t tell her coaches about her condition because she didn’t want to be treated differently.
She now has no restrictions and can play any sport.
“I’m really grateful for that because I know some kids are still limited to what they can do even after all their treatment,” she said. “It’s been a part of my life.”
Laue is applying to colleges and plans to study medicine and eventually become a pediatric cardiologist, helping children just like her.
She knows a cardiologist who also has congenital heart disease and has always admired how he relates to his patients. Starting in 2026, she plans to become a counselor at Camp del Corazon.
But football will always be with her. Two dozen females played organized football in the San Diego section of the CIF in 2023, and Laue is hoping that trend continues.
“Definitely do it. Don’t be afraid to do it,” she said of her message to other young girls curious about playing.
“When I first started to do it, wanting to do it, people were like, ‘Oh, but you’re going to be the only girl.’ They were doubting. I was like, ‘No, if I really want to go do it, I’m gonna go do it.’ So that’s what I would say. If there’s something you really want to do in life, go do it. Because it could be amazing.”
And though she has no plans to play football in college, her future school better have a team.
“I’ve been looking at a few schools. And then I was like, ‘Oh, you don’t have football?’” she joked of her college application process. “Off my list.”
(Photo courtesy of Manorack Sukhaseum)
