Jersey Shore's 1st Female Football Coach Cheered By Billie Jean King, Pro Football Hall

TOMS RIVER, NJ — April Florie was up to her elbows in Pine Sol, cleaning her house last week when her son called her.

“Have you been on Twitter?” Mike Florie asked excitedly. April Florie was busy catching up on chores and hadn’t been on social media much at all over the previous several days.

“My phone is blowing up,” he said. The reason? April Florie’s photo was being circulated by the Pro Football Hall of Fame on its Twitter and Facebook accounts, along with a blurb that read, “You love to see it! 57-year-old mom of two April Florie is a teacher at Toms River High School East. Despite never having coached football before, she volunteered as an assistant coach and became the first female football coach in the history of New Jersey’s Shore Conference.”

Embedded in the photo was a screenshot of a tweet from tennis legend Billie Jean King: “Cheers to first-time high school football coach April Florie, who is the first woman football coach in the history of the Shore Conference in New Jersey, and one of only a handful of women coaches in the state.”

“I was caught off-guard,” she said of the tweets. At the same time, she was overwhelmed and honored by the knowledge that she had garnered such attention.

“Even in my Pine Sol-induced haze, it was not lost on me that Billie Jean King was tweeting about me,” she said.

April Florie, who is believed to be the first female coach in the Shore Conference and one of a handful of female varsity football coaches in New Jersey, didn’t set out to be a groundbreaker, she said Tuesday as she spoke about her journey into coaching high school football.

She had one goal in mind: to make friends at her new job.

Florie, a special education teacher, had taken a position at Toms River High School East in late 2022 after spending 10 years teaching in the Barnegat Schools and was looking for a way to build relationships with her new co-workers.

In Barnegat, “I was involved. I felt comfortable. It was an easy fit for me,” she said. The new school brought with it a wide range of ages, from teachers who were just out of college to veterans.

“When you go and get a new job at this age it’s a different experience,” Florie said. “You have to find a way to enmesh yourself into the fabric of a new job.”

Florie decided the best way was to get involved in the school. She was standing in the school office when the opportunity arose.

“I saw the football coach — he’s a friendly young man — and I said, ‘Do you need any help?’ “ Florie said.

“I can always use some help,” Kyle Sandberg, the head coach of the Raiders, told Florie.

“Sign me up,” Florie told him.

"It was so innocent and simple," Sandberg said Thursday. "I knew April, I’d had her daughter in class. When she approached me she said, 'I like you. I like East. I just want to be part of something,' I was like 'Yeah, you're in.'

"I'm the only teacher who coaches football in the building," Sandberg said. "She was an extra set of eyes and an extra set of hands and she was in the building. That’s a huge help because you're involved with the kids every day."

The extra interaction with students during the school day helps to build connections, he said. Florie also had some existing connections because her daughter is a senior and her son was a Toms River East graduate, so she knew some of the students through them.

"It was very pure, very simple," Sandberg said.

Florie saw herself as a casual football fan. She watched NFL games as a child and an adult — she has been a Washington fan since she was young, a tough choice growing up in Bloomfield surrounded by New York Giants fans. Her son, Mike, loves football but played baseball at East. Her daughter, Camille, is a field hockey player at East.

She told Sandberg up front that she did not come to the program with extensive football knowledge but that was not a deterrent.

“I have these other great skills. I’m not a wallflower, I’m a communicator and a leader, and I had the guts to try this,” she said.

But volunteering to help coach the football team seemed like the right choice, she said.

“I just figured (Sandberg) was the right person to do it with,” Florie said. “I am not a halfway lady. I don’t do anything a little bit.”

Sandberg said the connection with Florie was natural and attributed part of it to the fact that he was raised by a single mom who loved football.

"My mom is a die-hard Steelers fan," he said, and they watched football all the time. "April reminds me of that (experience)."

She told Sandberg up front that she did not come to the program with extensive football knowledge but that was not a deterrent.

“I have these other great skills. I’m not a wallflower, I’m a communicator and a leader, and I had the guts to try this,” she said.

“I can teach you the intricacies of football,” she said Sandberg told her. “Coaching is innate.”

"The one thing about April is she’s a sponge, she’s willing to learn," Sandberg said. "I will take a hardworking person and teach them football over a football coach who doesn’t work hard. April does that day in and day out."

Florie was approved as a volunteer in May but did not join the team until practices in August because she was teaching English language arts lessons to special education students during the extended school year program.

Her first practice was on a hot day in the midst of the heat wave.

“I’m not a bashful personality but I was shaking in my sneakers,” Florie said. She was welcomed without hesitation.

“The other football coaches were so kind,” she said, telling her that they, too, had been new once and understood the trepidation of being new. “My associates were wonderful.”

“The boys were a little confused at first,” she said. They had been told in May that she was joining as a volunteer coach, and she had gotten a lot of questions.

“They were asking me what capacity I would be helping with the team,” she said, even asking if she would be the team mom. Not in a malicious way; “they were genuinely excited but confused.”

“I said, ‘I’m going to do whatever the boss tells me to do,’ ” Florie said. “It was pretty funny.”

There were no issues of respect, she said. “They listened when I yelled and they listened when I whispered. It was great.”

Florie said she immersed herself in learning the intricacies of football, listening to the other coaches and studying everything she could get her hands on. One of her favorite tasks became analyzing game film.

“You know when you start on Netflix and you’re going to watch one episode of the show and four hours later you’re still watching?” she said. “I didn’t know how many hours I would spend. It’s my new addiction, my new bingeworthy show.”

“We’d get a message that the game films were up on Sunday mornings, and I was right there with my coffee,” Florie said.

Sandberg said Florie assisted with coaching the linebackers and the wide receivers, and during the games she had a critical role: She was the "get-back" coach, tasked with making sure the players, coaches and other team staff on the sidelines stayed back from the field. Encroaching on the field could result in a penalty for the team.

"At the beginning of each game when the officials would come up to over the rules before the coin toss, they'd ask 'Who's the get-back coach?' I'd say 'April Florie is,' and you could see the shock on their faces," Sandberg said with a laugh.

The learning experience has been something Florie welcomed because it’s a challenge, drawing the contrast with her experience and comfort with her abilities as a veteran teacher.

“Learning football was like learning another language. There’s a huge learning curve that I continue to learn. It’s something I had to work on that was real learning,” Florie said.

She has learned so much in the first year that on Wednesday night, Florie stepped in at the last minute as the announcer on the annual Powder Puff football game between the junior and senior classes.

"I called her during the game and said, 'How awesome is this?' " Sandberg said. "You should call this game every year."

The only real issue she faced as a woman was a lack of bathroom facilities. On more than one occasion when the Raiders played at other schools, there were no girls' bathrooms open.

“They pulled all of the boys out of the bathroom and built me a defensive line” so she could use the restroom. “ 'Nobody goes in until Coach Florie comes out,' they'd say,” she said with a laugh.

Being part of the team has given her a real appreciation for the way football can bring the community together.

“I was completely humbled to see the reach football has,” Florie said. “Friday night football is such a big thing in this town. It was wonderful to be on the sidelines on a Friday night and experience that with the players and feel that energy.”

There was an unexpected benefit, too.

“The camaraderie built around the sport, it kind of next-leveled my family,” Florie said of her relationship with her children. “It was something great to talk about.”

Her children have been very supportive.

“My daughter loved it. She’s a super-involved student, and we know our own boundaries,” she said. “My son was more than proud.”

Florie said she’s hopeful of continuing to volunteer with the football team next season, to build on what she learned this fall. “Year 2 would be interesting because now I know what to expect.”

She’s grateful for the experience and for Sandberg welcoming her assistance.

"It's unique now to have April here," Sandberg said. While the other two Toms River high schools have traditions built on family names and coaching legacies, East has struggled a bit with that.

It's something Sandberg said he is trying to build. His staff includes several Toms River East graduates and is creating its own family atmosphere.

"April brings a twist to that," he said, because her children are East students.

"It started out as let’s help out the kids in the community and it’s turned into something really special," Sandberg said. "I’d love to have her for another season."

And he, like so many others, is relishing the national attention her presence has brought to the team.

"To have the Pro Football Hall of Fame put out something involving my program, for Billie Jean King to retweet that and make her comments, I’m blown away," Sandberg said.

"I told April, the best part about this is there’s no hidden agenda. You wanted to help and I needed help."

“There was full transparency between us," Florie said.

"When people are transparent it kind of opens up your minds. I was willing to take a chance on this young guy and he was willing to take a chance on me," she said. “If everybody took a page out of that we’d all be better off.”

Note: This article has been updated with comments from Toms River East head coach Kyle Sandberg.