“Cats down 10-17 at half,” a Twitter user wrote, “but the jags kicker is a girl, so we got this…”
    

“Lol” replied Savannah, senior. The Jaguars beat the Wildcats 24-14 an hour later.

Standing outside of the field house in her workout clothes, Savannah gives the impression that she's given an interview a few times before. And in fact, she has.
     

As she lists the myriad of sports she’s played throughout her career, she understandably pauses to think before she proceeds.
    

“Soccer, I started in second grade. I actually met Coach Carter at soccer camps when I was really little. Basketball, I started playing church league in kindergarten, playing AAU [Amateur Athletic Union] in ninth.”
    

“And I’ve lettered, in I think, hold on.”
    

“I’ve lettered in five varsity sports. It means you’ve played that season. Like, I played varsity soccer my seventh grade year, varsity softball my eighth grade year, I’ve played varsity basketball my ninth grade year, tenth, eleventh, and I’ll play varsity basketball this year. So it’s basically like you were a part of the team and you affected the team.”
    

While this may be overwhelming to most, Savannah comes from a family of athletes. Her father and her grandfather were both football kickers.
    

“She’s kind of a third-generation kicker,” Travis, her father, said.
    

And from the beginning, her father says, Savannah was full of potential.
    

“She was a very active little kid, even at a very young age. Like, as a toddler, she was always going. It was hard to get her to sit down for even a second. One of the first things we did was put her in a gymnastics class for toddlers and she loved it, she wanted to go all the time. And it sort of just went from there.”
    

At this point, playing football seems almost like an afterthought to her. Savannah’s start in the game did come much later than in the other sports she’s played, and she didn’t set out to play it either.
    

“She grew up playing soccer, and every once in a while I would mention, ‘You would be kind of a good kicker in football,’ but she brushed it off because she knew it was a guys’ sport,” her father said.
    

However, opportunity came in Savannah’s sophomore year, when her previous high school (in South Carolina) lacked a kicker for their team. Her father suggested she try kicking, and her mother, Heather, posted a video of her practicing on Facebook. Word of the video spread, and about a week later, she was asked to try out.
    

Renner played for her school’s team during her sophomore year and half of her junior year before moving back to Alabama. She immediately began soccer again, but come football season, she began raising some eyebrows. After seeing football interest sheets posted in the cafeteria, she approached head football coach, Mike, saying she had kicked for the past two years and wanted to join the school's team.
    

“She came up to me and said she wanted to try out,” Mike said, “I shooed her off, basically ignored her, but then the guys showed me a video and I took her out of class. She’s the best [kicker] we’ve had. Time will tell if [she’s the best] ever.”
    

It doesn’t seem to matter to him that she is a girl. He says she does the same work the other players do, and in turn, he treats her the same way he treats them.
    

“I yell at her like I do at all the other guys,” he said, “She carries her own load, she helps out with the team, she runs with the team, she did everything the other players had to do over the summer, she’s just as a part of the team as anybody.”
    

Her teammates agree.
    

“She’s just like any other person on the team,” said Lavest, senior, “There’s nothing wrong with having a girl on the team.”
    

“She’s cool, friendly, sassy,” said Jeremy, sophomore, “Smart as crap,” added Drake, freshman.
    

“She’a a girl. She’s a good kicker. Out of all the guys I’ve seen kick, she’s one of the best,” said Fred, senior.
    

Savannah does not try to hide it, she is, in fact, a girl. She makes a point to wear a braid with a bow on the end
for every game she’s played.
    

“It’s kind of superstition,” she said, “I wore it my first game, because I was a little, you know, intimidated. I didn’t want to be thought of as a boy. And now — I’m an athlete, I can compete out here and contribute to my team to help them win, so I don’t really care as much about if people think I’m a boy.”
    

Rather than going easier on her because she is a girl, Savannah says that opposing teams do the opposite.
     

“It almost seems like they’re running harder because they don’t want a girl to score on them, and it makes sense to me. But I don’t take it as a bad thing. I kind of take it as motivation and, they’re obviously worried about you kicking, so you take it as motivation and keep going.”
    

Some things are just different for girls, and Savannah says that she noticed this when trying to put on her uniform for the first time. She had tried out for the team the day before picture day, and because her uniform was made for boys, it was uncomfortable and difficult to put on.
    

“I had no clue how to put it on. My dad played, so he could help me, but without my dad, oh gosh, I would’ve probably come out looking crazy,” she said.
    

However, Savannah takes advantage of the thing that launched her football career in the first place, social media. It’s there that she finds other girls across the country who play football, girls she can relate to.
    

“The ones that I’ve met have been from Oklahoma, I think there’s one from Pennsylvania, one from like, Arizona, they’re all spread out,” she said.
    

She doesn’t go looking for them, they usually find her.
     “Sometimes they just pop up on my [Facebook] Explore, like sometimes I’ll go on there and be bored and there’s like a girl kicking, and I’m like ‘Hey, I do that too!’”
    

“It’s pretty cool. Because all the ones I’ve met have the same personality as me, you know, really competitive, they don’t think of themselves as like, a girl going out into football, they aren’t really intimidated,” she said.
    

“Of course, at first, everyone was, but it’s pretty cool because you meet girls that are like you that understand exactly what you’re doing and so you can talk to them about whatever you need to. Because with boys," she laughs, "you don’t...it’s a little bit different, they don’t really care about if your hair has a bump in it, or you know, where do the pads go. Yeah it’s kind of confusing sometimes, but I’ve gotten used to it.”
    

Savannah frequently mentions the team, rather than herself. Her team-mindedness is even more evident when she speaks about the girls who see her after games.
    

“I have had girls come up to me and say ‘Hey, we think what you’re doing is awesome’ and its a good feeling,” she said.
    

Her father says that this helps fuel her drive for success.
    

“She’s not always the fastest, not the biggest…but she has that fiery spirit that helps her thrive, and sometimes you have to   tone her down just around the house (laughs). But it's a big part of her — it makes her who she is,” he said.    

“It’s not all about the sport and winning games,” Savannah said. “Of course, I love to win, I want to win every game I play, but football is a sport that can really impact peoples lives, whether they are playing it or have a role model in it. And to think that I could be a role model for girls is pretty cool.”
    

“I don’t know how to explain it other than — it’s cool.”