Women in Motion, in Competition and in Community on the Anniversary of Title IX

I grew up with a brother one year older. I never believed there was something he could do that I couldn't.

When he went out for cross-country in fourth grade, so did I, running alongside the boys without question, without permission. Basketball in winter. Little League and softball in the summer. Skating, swimming, skiing, tennis, golf. All of it available, all of it ours. This was in part due to how our parents raised us, and also to Title IX.

Fifty years later, I am still running.

Sport has marked every stage of my life the way certain songs carry you back instantly to the person you were when you first heard them. There is a tapestry in the looking back: people, places, obstacles, defeats and victories, all of it woven into who I am at this moment. The beauty of sport is not in the winning but in the becoming — an ever-evolving state of being where I move along my path with intention and openness.

There is incredible power in community and movement. When there is inclusion, we thrive as individuals and as a collective. Title IX did not give us sport. It gave us the legal recognition of what we already were: women who belong in motion, in competition, in community. The legislation named something that had always been true.

When women are included, we do not just participate. We shape the entirety. The community deepens. The lineage extends. Every girl who laces up now runs on ground that was always hers, on ground that women before her insisted upon claiming.