Alexandria firefighter Tiffany Matthews owns the Washington Prodigy women’s pro-football team

You might say Tiffany Matthews wears a lot of hats.

Matthews is a senior instructor at the Alexandria Fire Department’s academy, training the city’s freshest recruits how to run into burning buildings and save lives. In her off-duty hours, though, she’s the founding owner of the Washington Prodigy women’s pro-football team. In fact, she’s been involved in  professional football just as long as she’s been with AFD — 19 years.

An Alexandria native, Matthews joined the U.S. Army after graduating in 1998 from T.C. Williams High School, where she played varsity basketball. Watching Sunday football was a special event for her family, she said, and her interest in the game started by watching her brother play on the George Washington Middle School football team. The team’s coach was impressed enough to make her his assistant.

“I’d be watching my brother playing and I was just observing to the point where I was calling out plays,” Matthews recalled. “The coach noticed and asked me if I wanted to hold his clipboard…. Once I had that clipboard, I was kind of motivated on the sideline.”

Matthews, now 43, was a U.S. Army private stationed in Germany when she started playing flag football. In 2004, after being discharged, she started working as an Alexandria firefighter. That same year she was also recruited as a running back for the D.C. Divas.

The season runs every year from April to June, In 2012, she broke away from the Divas to found the Washington Prodigy. She had just 14 athletes, including herself as a player/owner/head coach. Now the team is one of 16 teams in the Women’s National Football Conference (WNFC). She stopped playing in 2018, and the team now boasts 40 players in the six-game season, which runs from April to June. Home games are played at Anacostia High School in D.C., and as far away as Texas, Florida and Tennessee.

None of the players are paid, and Matthews says she wants the WNFC to have the same name recognition and popularity as the Women’s National Basketball Association.

“I think we deserve it,” she said. “The coaches plan and meet weekly, and the players come to practice two or three times a week.”

She also said she’s on-board with the WNFC incorporating flag football into its offerings.

“The league is going in a great direction,” Matthews said. “And I think they do a very good job of making sure we’re (team owners are) on the same page by bringing in large endorsements and sponsorships like Adidas, and Dick’s Sporting Goods.”

Matthews plans on retiring from the fire department in six years, after which she says she will focus on the team.

If asked, Matthews describes herself as a firefighter first, and a pro-sports team owner second.

“It depends on the environment,” she said “I’m a firefighter. That’s pretty much my response, unless I’m in a sporting environment and they already kind of know that I’m involved with footballers in some sort of fashion.”

Team photo via Facebook