Hey Kate, it's mom. Well, I was attending Togate High School in Warwick, Rhode Island

when Title IX became law in 1972. I had just finished my sophomore year. Growing up, I was a

huge sports fan, avid Boston Red Sox and Providence College, Friars basketball, because because my father, those were his teams and they became

mine. And from an early age, I played baseball with the neighborhood boys and I was decent.

I could hit, I could field. It was my sport until it couldn't be anymore.

In high school we had a small girls basketball team.

It was the only girls sport I remember from high school and although I loved

basketball so much I had never played it. I don't even remember a nearby court

we could go to and if I had wanted to learn at an early age like I did kind of informally with baseball,

the infrastructure just wasn't there. So I didn't really know how to play and had no confidence that I could be good and I would want to be good

The girls who were on the team were called

Jock-Ez I'm kind of used in air quotes

There was a little bit of innuendo to that and it wasn't horrible, but it was there.

So I didn't want to be a jocket. I wanted to be a cheerleader to cheer on the freaking boys.

And to make matters worse, I wasn't very good. I couldn't do splits and the

toe jumps that you had to do and try out so I didn't even make the important cheerleading

squads like football and basketball. I ended up

clapping my hands in a hockey rink. So much fun. So then of course I dated a basketball

player in college, Kate's dad Chris. He knew how much I love sports and actually encouraged me to try out for

Koolgate's women's lacrosse team. So yeah this is 1977 and women's sports were growing in college. I made the JV the one good pass I made to a teammate and there were a few cheers on the sidelines.

So I married that basketball player and traveled overseas to Holland in France as he played professionally

and I lived out my sports dreams vicariously through him and then later our two daughters. Kate and Ryan grew up in Schenectady, New York in the

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