PORTLAND – Taking up football at an age when most NFL quarterbacks have hung up their cleats, Mariette Harpole has just hit her stride.

At 38, she just completed her second season as quarterback for the Maine Freeze. Like most of her teammates, she never played in helmet and pads before signing on with the National Women’s Football Association team.

“I love it,” she said. “I’m somewhat addicted. I almost wish I wasn’t, but there’s such camaraderie, and it’s such a challenge.”

She’s not alone. Within the past four years, at least three women’s football leagues with a total of 70 teams have sprouted up across the country.

The NWFA, the largest, offers what might be the closest approximation of pro football available to women, even though players draw no pay and in fact have to pay for their own uniforms, equipment, and other expenses.

It’s hard-hitting football, with grunting and groaning and the sounds of shoulder pads and helmets clashing on the field.

In other words, this is serious stuff.

“They all want to hit, to be physical and aggressive,” said Jason McLeod, who coached high school and men’s semipro football teams before heading the Freeze’s six-man coaching staff.

Harpole, who works for an equipment repair subcontractor at the Pratt & Whitney plant in North Berwick, is one of more than 40 team members who devote long hours to games, practices, and individual fitness programs to pursue a sport associated almost exclusively with men.

The Freeze players range in age from 17 to 41 and include teachers, office workers, and stay-at-home moms. Like their male counterparts, they limp back to work with bumps and bruises after games.

Before knocking themselves around on the field, most team members played softball, basketball, or field hockey but their football experience was usually limited to pickup games of two-hand touch.

“Most of the boys, when they’re freshmen or sophomores in high school, have played the game before, starting with Pop Warner and up through middle school,” McLeod said. “Women have no feeder system. They have no experience of the game.”

Despite their inexperience, the Freeze are eager students, McLeod said.

“They’re like sponges. They want to soak up everything you want to teach them. They don’t want to stop learning,” he said.

When the Freeze came to town, it provided Maine women with a never-before chance to don equipment and play tackle football.

Ruth Murphy, a mother of four from Naples, said she was drawn to the sport because she “always enjoyed the contact, the hitting.”

Now, she says, it’s the sense of family she shares with her teammates that she finds appealing.

“In softball, if you make a mistake, you can cost your team a run, but in football if you don’t make your block you can lose a quarterback,” said the 34-year-old offensive tackle.

Playing in the NWFA’s tough Northeast Division, the Freeze were 0-8 in last year’s inaugural season. They started this year with three losses but had back-to-back wins over the Rochester Raptors before losing the last three games.

The Freeze plays its home games at Portland’s Fitzpatrick Stadium, where the team has filled about 500 to 600 of the 6,000 seats. The games have all the trappings, including a spirited announcer, occasional cheerleaders, and the Freeze mascot, a silver wolf named Frostbite.

Team owner Toby Bryant admitted that creating a fan base has been difficult during a time of the year when most folks are thinking baseball.

“The fans are the hardest part – trying to convince people that women’s football is worth spending the money to go see,” said Bryant.

Bryant, whose wife Trina plays offensive tackle, estimates that he has already pumped $80,000 into the team, half of which was spent on Maine Freeze merchandise for sale to fans and to give to businesses that agreed to be sponsors.

For the women on the team, playing for the Maine Freeze represents a major commitment of money, as well as heart and soul.

In the preseason, players practice three days a week and put in additional hours in the gym or on the track.

They also pay for their own helmets, pads, cleats, and uniforms. When combined with other costs such as travel and child-care, former owner Shay Bellas figures the average player spends $1,500 to pursue the sport in her first year.

For Harpole, who started out last season at wide receiver before switching to quarterback, expenses include about $1,000 a year in medical costs related to various injuries. She played all of last season with torn ligaments in her left knee; this year she suffered bruised ribs in the second game.

Harpole says her husband and two children support her decision to play football despite the risks.

“They brag that their mom’s a quarterback in football. But on the other hand they worry that I’m going to get hurt very badly, and I’m sure they would be very relieved if I would commit to ending it sometime soon,” she said.

Middle linebacker Mae Gregoire, one of three UnumProvident employees on the team, said players have to focus on their play and set injury worries aside.

“You can’t worry about getting hurt. Once you do, you’re very tentative and you won’t do yourself or your team any good,” said Gregoire.

Each player must provide evidence of health insurance before being permitted to suit up, although the Freeze hopes eventually to secure a supplemental policy.

One player had an even bigger worry than health insurance. Before taking the field, Elizabeth McKenney, a 40-year-old defensive end from Winthrop, had her will prepared and told her 12-year-old daughter she could find it in her gym bag.

“You just never know,” said McKenney, a real estate broker.