I grew up in an era when women’s sports were lower than second class.
Billie Jean King was fighting not just for equality, but for the most basic recognition in a largely misogynistic society. When I was a kid, the now cartoonish-seeming tennis match against the aging Bobby Riggs in the Houston Astrodome carried significant consequences for the advancement of women’s sports should King have dropped the match.
Thankfully, she didn’t.
When I first started playing organized basketball in 1974, girls didn’t have similar opportunities. As I reached seventh grade, the only woman I was aware of playing basketball was Ann Meyers at UCLA (in part because she was David Meyers’ sister), and I recall the largely negative reaction when Meyers went to training camp with the Indiana Pacers.
The girl I actually played against was Cheryl Miller, around 1977. She was playing for a boys team and it was unheard of for a girl to play basketball against boys at that time. Miller went on to be arguably the greatest women’s basketball player of all time. Yet, when Miller finished her career at USC as the best…
