Cynthia “Red” Bryant will be the first to tell you that football was never her favorite sport - it was basketball.

Growing up in North Minneapolis, Bryant was a standout basketball player first at Patrick Henry High School and later Minneapolis Community & Technical College, and she had dreams of playing professionally. Bryant joined a rec league basketball team at the Uptown YMCA after having her son, Talon, and that’s where she was given an opportunity that would change her life - and her sport of choice.

During her time with the rec league, Bryan was recruited by JT Turner, a former Minnesota Viking, to come play on the one of the first teams in the Women’s Professional Football League. Bryant decided to give it a try, and she was one of 200 women from all over the U.S. and the world who showed up in 1999 vying for a spot on one of two teams - the Michigan Minx and the Minnesota Vixen.

Tryouts were held at Augsburg University and the Metrodome, and at the end of the tryouts, 80 women were split onto the two rosters, and they traveled around for the Barnstorming Tour to help other states start their own teams. 

In the team’s early days, Bryant - who stuck with the Vixen for 25 years before retiring after the 2022-23 season - and her teammates practiced on the dirt field at St. Paul’s Jimmy Lee Recreation Center. In the years that followed, they competed at venues around the country, including the Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium in Canton, Ohio, for the Women’s Football Alliance championships.

Over the course of her impressive career, Bryant, a defender for the Vixen, earned a spot on the all-star team 18 times, was a 12-time Defensive Player-of-the-Year, an 11-time All-American, and her team MVP five times. She led the league in tackles and sacks in multiple seasons. In 2018, Bryant was part of the first class of women inducted into the Women’s Pro Football Hall of Fame in Las Vegas.

While dominating opposing offenses on the field, Bryant also broke down barriers off the field and helped youth in North Minneapolis find a place to succeed. She has worked at Plymouth Youth Christian Center - PCYC - an alternative high school dedicated to giving students a positive, rigorous and community-connected education - for more than 18 years. She graduated from the alternative high school, and has worked her way up from an after-school program leader to the school’s assistant dean, and works to make sure every kid who comes through the doors knows they have the chance to succeed.

While Bryant retired from football in July 2023 as one of the most dominant defensive players in league history, it has never been about the stats, the awards, or the honors. For her, seeing flag football added to the Olympics and watching women’s tackle football grow in the U.S. and around the world is more important than any individual honor or title. The most important piece of her legacy is the barriers she’s broken down for girls and women to continue to play football, the sport she’s grown to love.