Growing up in the fifties I yearned to be on some sort of a team. If there were girls participating in any kind of athletics other than riding horses, I did not know them. To whet my appetite there were the school sponsored sports days in which we could participate in such Olympic-level events as the three-legged race, or the egg on a spoon race, or the ever popular tug of war.
Yes, basketball was open to girls, but a silly truncated version in which the guards and forwards were only allowed to play on half the court. We might strain our weak, feminine bodies if we played full court ball like the boys. I knew of woman swimmers from the news, but they could not swim the butterfly as that was a powerful male stroke.
My hopes rose in high school where I learned that our gym teacher was forming a field hockey team. I enthusiastically stayed after school for the initial meeting only to have my hopes once again dashed. We would only be playing each other, one team wearing bright orange vests to distinguish them from their fellow classmates. The equipment, which was laid out before us, was notable for its extensive use of duct tape which was curling and fraying at the edges. Still I was willing to give it a try, and stayed after school on two separate occasions ready to take to the field. However, we played on neither day as the boys were using the facility, and they had priority over us. This information was announced by our gym teacher with more cheer than I thought that fact warranted. I should have quit at that point, but hung around valiantly until we finally got on the field. When I at last placed stick to ball in a real game, the stick gave off a loud noise, splitting from one end to the other, the duct tape hanging limply in shame. Without a word I took off my orange vest, handed my bedraggled stick to the gym teacher, and walked off the field. As a reward I got a C in gym for the quarter.
Enter Title IX, the biggest change for women since I my youth. My three girls played a series of sports from high school teams, to rec teams, to neighborhood swim teams. None of them were Olympic hopefuls, but that was not the point. They were learning about teamwork, they were on the field not beside it, and they were getting great exercise. They could run the full court in basketball, they could learn the butterfly, and they could run a marathon without being booed.
I think sometimes that the young women of the current generation, my granddaughter’s age group, do not know what they have been given. But then that is all right. I am glad that they think it is normal to have female athletics at their fingertips. That is as it should be.