This may not sound particularly remarkable for a kid from 1980s suburbia, and it is not. What is remarkable is the ease and unremarkableness of my pursuing all of these sports. Those sports, 20 years prior, had been so dominated by men that average female athletes like me would have had zero options to participate.
My mother never received any specialized athletic training beyond PE until she started taking Pilates classes as an adult in 2002. That didn't mean that she wasn't active -- she grew up in New Hampshire, where she hiked, camped, ice skated and played pickup softball. She took swimming lessons as a child and became a lifeguard when she was 16.
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