Jennifer King and the Washington Redskins are making headlines as the team brings on King as a full-year coaching intern.
The addition of King was made by new head coach Ron Rivera. "Jennifer is a bright young coach and will be a great addition to our staff," Rivera said in a statement obtained by the Washington Post. "Her familiarity with my expectations as a coach and my firsthand knowledge of her work ethic and preparation were big factors in bringing her to the Redskins."
Prior to coaching, King's athletic career is full of impressive achievements. During her days at Guilford College in North Carolina she played softball, basketball, and played in the Women's Football Alliance who won a national championship with the New York Sharks. She earned Guilford's top athletics honor, the Nereus C. English Athletic Leadership Award and was also named the 2005 Best Undergraduate Female Athlete Award. When she graduated in 2006, she was named Best Female Athlete and received other accolades.
In 2016, she was one of 50 women chosen to attend the NFL's Women's Careers in Football Forum. This is where she met Rivera, who was the head coach for the Carolina Panthers at the time. That connection led her to become Carolina's first female coaching intern where she has spend the past two summers.
Just four years later, she is now the first black woman to be hired as a full-time assistant coach in the NFL. King will work mostly with the running backs and will assist Rivera. She'll have the responsibilities of a full-time assistant coach but her official title is an intern, which is normal for full-year coaching interns, according to the Washington Post.
"I think, for the little girls, that's just what I want for them. To let them know that if that's what they want to do, they can do it," King told WSOC-TV in 2018. "It's so special to see someone in a position you never thought you could be in."
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