After four championship heartbreaks, the Minnesota Vixen finally have the trophy—and they took it with a 42-14 demolition of Pittsburgh. The Twin Cities women’s tackle-football team turned last Saturday’s WFA Pro National Championship in Canton, Ohio, into a statement win, finishing a season that had previously ended just short.
A Fox 9 video puts a local face on the breakthrough, with team captain Taylor Fox discussing the victory, the road to the title and what the championship means for women’s football in Minnesota. The segment arrives as the Vixen’s celebration moves from the locker room into a broader conversation about the program’s place in the state’s sports scene.
On the field, Minnesota made the final anything but dramatic. Fox 9 reported that the Vixen forced five turnovers, while quarterback Erin Kelley completed 15 of 20 passes for 152 yards and two touchdowns on her way to championship-game MVP honors. The victory capped an 8-1 season and gave the franchise its first WFA title.
A Title Years In The Making
The Vixen have been building toward this moment since the team began play in 1999. The Minnesota Star Tribune noted that Minnesota had lost four previous league championship games, including title-game defeats in 2016, 2018, 2021 and 2022.
This run required more than simply surviving the final Saturday. Minnesota first knocked out the two-time defending champion St. Louis Slam in the playoffs, then edged Salt Lake City 23-20 on a last-second field goal to win the American Conference and reach the championship game, according to the Star Tribune.
Minnesota’s Women’s Football Program Has Momentum
The Vixen’s success was reflected in the Women’s Football Alliance’s own season awards. The league named Connor Jo Lewis its American Conference Coach of the Year and Britt Peterson its American Conference Defensive Player of the Year, while crediting Minnesota with averaging roughly 43 points per game and allowing about 10.
That combination of experience and production helps explain why the championship felt like a breakthrough rather than a fluke. The Vixen have now turned years of near-misses into a national platform for a program that has kept women’s tackle football alive in Minnesota for more than two decades.
The next chapter is already taking shape: CBS Minnesota reported that tryouts for the 2027 Vixen team are scheduled to begin in September. For a franchise that waited 27 seasons to win its first championship, the trophy is both a payoff and a recruiting pitch.
