Jamie Robertson tried her best to convince the woman serving ice cream at Baskin-Robbins in Durango, and the woman working at the nearby Spaaah Shop, too. But to no avail.

Alas, the search continues.

Robertson is the organizer of the Four Corners’ new women’s tackle football team – the North West Wolves. And while Robertson said the Wolves are off to a good start in this, their first year, there’s something missing. Well, representation from three of the Four Corners. And, in particular, players from the Durango area.

So Robertson, whose husband and his family are from Durango, has made a point to recruit every time she gets to Durango. She’s put up fliers most everywhere she can in town. And, when she stops for ice cream or visits the spa, she’s always pitching the Wolves. She knows that Durango has strong female athletes from Fort Lewis College and Durango High School who can help the team and, ultimately, the sport.

“Even if some Durango girls found some girls from, say, Pagosa Springs and wanted to start their own team, we would be more than happy to show them the ropes,” Robertson said. “We want to see this bloom.”

As it is now, the Wolves have just 13 players – all from New Mexico. But their league requires only eight starters on each side of the ball, and most of the Wolves play both offense and defense. So far, the team has made it work, winning three of its first five games and winning by forfeit this week against New Mexico teams.

The Wolves have drawn paramedics and nutritionists and nurses, Robertson said, most wanting something more than a weekly game of flag football. But there also are players who have never played the game in any capacity, even those who have never watched or played a football game of any kind, Robertson said.

“You just have to be willing. You have to jump off the cliff,” said Robertson, also a guard/defensive tackle for the Wolves.

Before organizing and playing for the Wolves, Robertson said she played flag football in Farmington for about 10 years. But Robertson said she wanted more.

“Nothing’s impossible,” she said of the premise of women’s tackle football. “I spent the last 10 years playing flag football and wanted something a little more intense.”

Women’s tackle football is definitely that, Robertson said.

“With the men, you watch the game and you see the skill,” she said. “With the women, you watch the game and you see the brutality.”

That’s what drew Kami Calder to women’s tackle football. Although slender, almost petite, she relished her one game as a blocking tight end/outside linebacker for the Wolves – she’s still in a brace after injuring her knee while snowboarding at Purgatory Resort earlier this winter.

Still, she’s champing at the bit to get back.

“It’s so fun to be out there and running around and hitting people,” Calder said with a laugh. “I have a tough time tackling, though – I just slow them down. I tackled somebody and she said, ‘There’s something under me.’ And I said, ‘That’s me!’ She said, ‘You’re so tiny.’

“We (Calder and Robertson) have played on the same (flag football) team for years. I always got in trouble for roughing the passer.”

A nurse, Calder has three daughters. She said she’d have no trouble with them following in her tackle football footsteps.

“I told one of them that next year she can play,” Calder said of her eldest daughter, who will be 16. A new rule recently dropped the minimum age from 18 to 16, she said. The Wolves’ players range in age from 21 to 38, according to Robinson.

The season, which started in February, runs through the end of June (including the playoffs), Robertson said, with the highlight being an April 25 game in Denver against the Freeze, one of the premier teams in the Independent Women’s Football League.

“I believe the ladies deserve a fair shot to see if this is something they want to do,” Russ Benson, the Wolves’ head coach, said of why he decided to coach the team. Benson also is the head coach at Mesa View Middle School in Farmington, and the Wolves play their home games at the Mesa View field.

“There’s definitely been a learning curve for me,” he said. “But the team has come together a lot faster than I thought. The players take care of each other.”

bpeterson@durangoherald.com