Sometimes, the football players on the opposing team would think the woman on the sideline was the manager. Or they would approach her — she had to be the trainer, right? — to tape up their ankles.

“I was like, ‘Sorry, guys, uh, you’ve got to go to the trainer, not me,’” said Jennifer Stango Garzone, the first female head high school football coach in the state. “It happened more so in the beginning and not so much now.”

Garzone, an assistant football coach for seven years at Wolcott Tech, became the head coach of MCW United in February after former coach Jamie Coty resigned. MCW United is a co-op team that encompasses Wolcott Tech in Torrington, Housatonic Regional High School in Canaan and Wamogo High in Litchfield.

“Football is probably always known to be not only a male sport, but kind of a man’s man sport — so for a woman to break the barriers down, so to speak … but Jen’s not your typical woman,” said MCW assistant Damian Gwinn, who has known Garzone for four years. “She played football. She knows the game. She’s not just some random person, that there was nobody there and she was the only one available to take the job. She was more than qualified for it.”

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