BAY MINETTE, Ala. — They may not be as big or as fast as their male counterparts, and they don’t command the million-dollar salaries of the NFL or even the six-figure contracts of some Arena Football League players, but professional football is coming to Bay Minette this coming Saturday night when the Gulf Coast Herricanes make their home-field debut on Simmons Field.

The Herricanes, who will play the Emerald Coast Barracudas of Panama City, Fla., in their first home ggame of the season, began their existence in Biloxi, Miss., in 2004 in the already established National Women’s Football Association. They were scheduled move to Mobile after the 2005 season, but Hurricane Katrina disrupted those plans.

Many of the team’s players live on the Mississippi coast and lost all or most of their homes and belongings, so there was no 2006 season.

While the Herricanes still practice on Tuesday and Thursday nights in Mobile at the University of South Alabama, a chance meeting between Brock Cole, the team”s general manager and offensive coordinator, and Bay Minette mayor Sonny Dobbins at a recent Mardi Gras ball resulted in the Herricanes becoming Bay Minette’s newest home sports team.

“It was just a stroke of luck,” Dobbins said. “Brock and I met at a Mardi Gras ball, and I asked him why didn’t he bring his team to Bay Minette. I told him they could probably use Simmons Field for free. A few days later he called me back and asked if I was serious. I told him I was and thought getting Simmons Field wouldn’t be a big problem.

“The process to getting Simmons was an OK by the principal, and the football coach, and the school superintendent, and of course their legal staff, and there was no problem. In fact, they’re all excited about it,” Dobbins said. “I think it’s bringing something to Bay Minette that, once again, nobody else’s got in the county.”

The addition of the Herricanes joins “the splash pad, right now a great, modern swimming pool” as “part of what we’re doing, bringing entertainment to our community,” Dobbins said. Gulf Coast will play four home games on Simmons Field, also hosting New Orleans on May 31, Houston on June 7, and Pensacola on June 21.

Remaining road games are May 24 at Pensacola and June 14 against Emerald Coast. All game have 7 p.m. kickoffs.

“We’re really excited about it,” Cole said of being able to play in Bay Minette. “I think Mobile, it’s kinda hard; we’re a small fish in a big pond where in Bay Minette we can kinda be the only show in town and I think Bay Minette is kinda more willing to embrace us and kinda call us their own.”

In Mobile, the Herricanes competed for audiences with two minor league men’s pro football teams plus other springtime sports events, Cole pointed out.

“The most of Bay Minette, people are real surprised about us” and “really want to embrace the team as their own,” Cole said. He said the Herricanes generally played in front of audiences ranging from 300 to 500 people, with a few season-opening games drawing close to 1,000.

NWFA teams play full-contact tackle football, and Cole said they play by all NFL rules with the exception of goal-post widths since most of the teams play on high school fields. Cole said the Herricanes, who started the 2008 season with two road losses, currently have between 30 and 35 players on the roster including a few over the age of 40 and one mother-daughter combo. Their youngest player is 17.

Many of the players have to play both offense and defense, Brock said, especially in the first two games when only about 22 were able to make the road trips. All of the players have full-time jobs that range from computer programmers to ship-yard workers to nurses and construction workers.

“Most of them have been playing both ways,” Cole said, and though the coaches try to substitute and play everybody, “We’ve got a number of girls that play the entire game and don’t come off the field.”

Cole said the Herricanes use a “regular pro offense with one tight end and two receivers, two backs, but we also run a full spread offense, like more of a West Coast where you’ve got four wide receivers and one in the backfield, and run it out of the shotgun” formation.

Now in his second season with the Herricanes after serving as a volunteer last year, Cole works under fourth-year head coach David Hilton. The team is owned by Tammy Long.

The team’s starting quarterback is former University of South Alabama basketball standout Ella Williams, who was a two-time All-American guard for the Lady Jaguars. Williams played at USA freom 1986-89 and averaged 14.8 points per game during her career, including 22.4 during her senior season. She also played one season as the only female member of the famed Harlem Globetrotters, and spent several seasons on foreign women’s professional hoop teams.

All of the teams members played at least one sport in high school and/or college, with most of them having played basketball, which “helps with the agility factor,” Cole said.

Tickets for Herricanes home games are $5 in advance for adults and are available by contacting Cole at 377-1603. Tickets at the gate will be $10 for adults, with children 12 years old and under admitted free. Season tickets are also available for $25.