One day in 1976, a group of women gathered in Houston’s Memorial Park. This was long before a multimillion-dollar redesign transformed the outdoor space with land bridges and serene boardwalks. These women weren’t coming together for a yoga class or a nature stroll. They were there to try out for the Herricanes, a new women’s full-tackle football team. Nope, not flag. Not powderpuff. These women were there to hit.“There were fifty or sixty women at that first tryout, and it was mass chaos,” says Billie Cooper, a Houston native who proudly wore her number 86 jersey as a linebacker during the four years the team survived. Cooper says several women who came back to practice after that first day quickly dropped off. “They were like,…