Christina Mondragón Schrader

By Jen Banowetz
June 2025 View more Spotlight

Going Pro on the Gridiron

Growing up, Christina Mondragón Schrader never imagined she’d one day be a professional football player—and yet here she is.

Donning jersey 17 for the Chicago Winds, a new team competing in the Women’s National Football Conference, Mondragón Schrader is also a licensed clinical therapist in the sports department at Grow Wellness Group in Naperville, working with young athletes. And she has a private practice in sports- and non-sports-related mental health.

Always a competitor, Mondragón Schrader played soccer for 15 years then rugby and flag football. Her jump to pro football was sparked by social media. “My wife ended up finding the Chicago Winds on Instagram, so then I reached out to them to see what tryouts looked like,” she says. After starting in the off-season, Mondragón Schrader signed with the Winds in January as a punter, kicker, and backup defensive back. “Being brand new to the sport, trying to soak up everything that I can, I would’ve never saw myself playing tackle football, so it has been just such a fun journey.”

We had a chance to talk with her about that journey before the Winds head into the conference playoffs June 5 to 8.

Q: How’s it jumping into a new sport?
A: This is my rookie season with football, learning as I go, even with kicking and punting. I know how to kick with soccer, I know how to kick with rugby, but even the small difference of the balls used, of foot placement and body mechanics and just physics [it’s different]. With kicking a football and learning through that has been exciting and hard at the same time, but in a good way.

Q: What’s been your favorite thing as a rookie?
A: Learning about football culture and community. I feel like each sport has its own feel and own culture and—being the psychology nerd that I am—I’m really tuning in how that affects or applies to the mental aspect and how important community and culture is within each sport. My favorite thing is just building that team cohesion, team camaraderie with each other, and feeling the support from the individuals who have played before and have played in the league before. Building those new friendships, essentially I feel as adults it could be hard to make new friends, and so being all thrown into this common setting and learning about people from different backgrounds, different sports, how we’re all here as one—that’s been really cool.

Q: Any advice for athletes?
A: Keep striving for your goals and your dreams. I am 33, and I’m just now playing tackle football. When you think of other pro sports, being in your 30s and starting something new is considered old for athletics. But I’ve always wanted to prove to myself that I could play at the highest level, so reminding younger athletes of the same and specifically women athletes. Football is always seen as a male-dominated sport, and a common theme with a lot of my teammates is they play tackle football because growing up, they were told that they couldn’t.

You can do what you want to do and keep pushing in, and the only person who can stop you is you essentially, so just to keep striving for your dreams. It takes a lot of hard work and a lot of time, but seeing that as part of the journey as opposed to a road block is easier said than done. But you’re never too old to do anything you want to do.

Q: How do you rank your favorite among soccer, rugby, and football?
A: They’re all tied for first.

Photos: Kiara Paige (headshot); Zoe Davis (game)