Vanderbilt's Sarah Fuller Publicity Stunt Included A Halftime Speech

If you were on the fence about whether Vanderbilt using soccer goalie Sarah Fuller as a fill-in kicker for Saturday's game against Missouri was a publicity stunt or a necessity, you got your answer on Sunday when it was announced that Fuller had given a halftime speech to her new teammates. Keep in mind, Fuller hadn't yet stepped foot on the field for her kickoff before giving this speech.

ESPN reporter Courtney Cronin jumped on a Zoom call to chat with Fuller about her time on the Vandy football team and that's when we learned that Fuller was given the floor to address her fellow football players.

“If I’m going to be honest, I was a little pissed off at how quiet everybody was on the sideline," Fuller told Cronin. "We made a first down, and I was the only one cheering and I was like - what the heck? What’s going on? And I tried to get them pumped up, and I was like, 'You guys need to start your team on.'

"My main thing was during the SEC tournament, my entire team was cheering the entire time. It didn’t matter if we were in the locker room or if they were on the sidelines, I think that’s what won it for us. Everybody was cheering non-stop. I just went in there, and I said exactly what I was thinking. I was like, 'We need to be cheering each other on. This is how you win games. This is how you get better by calling each other out for stuff, and I’m going to call you guys out.'

"We need to be supporting one another. If we get a first down, if an interception happens, it’s our fault. We need to be lifting each other up. That’s what a team’s about. I think this team has struggled, and that’s been part of it. We really just need to build that team camaraderie where they can all lean on one another. It was an adjustment going from that team mentality where – hey, we’re all here supporting one another, and I just wanted to bring that to this team.”