As a little girl, the separation between girls and boys was non-existent to me. I grew up with two older brothers that would kick the soccer ball around or throw the football with me. I never considered myself "worse" than them because I was a girl. They always beat me because I was seven years younger, but gender never came into it. I had friends in elementary and middle school that played boys' sports because they were either too good to play on the girls' team or there was no girls' lacrosse or flag football team. So why were girls in my generation fortunate enough to feel like we could compete at the same level as the boys around us? The answer lies with titans, such as Billie Jean King, who paved the way for women in sports.
Billie Jean King was a professional women’s tennis player in the 1960’s and 1970’s that changed the way people viewed women’s sports. When King was 12 years old, she looked around at the people playing at her tennis club and realized that not only were all the players white, but most were men. From that point on, she dedicated her life to becoming a tennis champion and advocate for gender equality in sports.
In 1973, Billie Jean King participated in one of the most highly publicized tennis matches in history. King faced Bobby Riggs in a match that was called “Battle of the Sexes”. Bobby Riggs was considered the No. 1 tennis player in the world in the 1930s and 1940s and continued to play challenge matches into the 1970s. He claimed that women’s tennis was so inferior to men’s, that he, at 55, could beat the top women’s tennis players at the time. In the “Battle of the Sexes” match, King beat Riggs 6–4, 6–3, 6–3. After the match, King said,
"I thought it would set us back 50 years if I didn't win that match. It would ruin the women's [tennis] tour and affect all women's self-esteem. To beat a 55-year-old guy was no thrill for me. The thrill was exposing a lot of new people to tennis."
It’s inspiring to know how many women before me fought to have a voice in sports. Without King and other titans in her generation, I believe that we wouldn’t see the appreciation for athletes such as Serena Williams, Hope Solo, or Ronda Rousey. King’s match showed people everywhere that not only women can be just as competitive athletes in their sport, but it also showed that women should be respected on and off the court.
