Heading into Superbowl 50, the NFL held its first ever “Women’s Summit” (#inthehuddle) in San Francisco this week.
Taking place in the ornate Beaux Arts Julia Morgan Ballroom atop the Merchants Exchange Building in the Financial District, the room was packed with lots of female athletes, journalists and executives.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell shared opening remarks before turning things over to Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who delivered the event’s keynote address.
Serena Williams, Billie Jean King, Annika Sorenstam, Jessica Mendoza were among other participants in the two-day event. Jane Skinner Goodell, the former FOX News anchor and wife of the NFL commissioner, moderated a panel titled “Media, Entertainment and Sports as a Platform.
There was lots of discussion about girls’ participation in sports, about the benefits of leadership and 
team building in sports though it was never really clear how those issues relate directly to the NFL.
One of the highlights of the Summit was a spoken word artist named Holly Peterson (stage name HK Poet) who played women’s tackle football and presented a poem called “The Sisterhood of Sport. It was such a hit, she was called back on Day Two for an encore.
“I remember the first time I caught a ball. It was a happy accident. I was five or six years old at my Daddy’s baseball game. I just happened to running along the outskirts of left field when a foul ball took a bad hop. I barely remember seeing it but I remember hearing the sound of my glove pop, feeling it stuck in my clutch like it belonged to me, like it was a part of me. Like it was my destiny.”
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