Growing up in a household full of athletes, I always believed the misconception that sports was a man’s world. My father was a coach for several different sports teams during my childhood and teenage years. Therefore, I always wanted to feel like I lived up to the expectations of what he thought an athlete was.

I grew up playing baseball from the age of four to 15, and always wanted to impress my father by having him praise me for my athletic skills in the same way he would idolize my brother.

By the age of 13, I was on a baseball travel team full of boys. I was the starting second baseman in every game and batted third in the lineup because I was a power hitter. I remember my father being extremely hard on me and telling me I had to work twice as hard to fit into a man’s sport.

It seemed like no matter how athletic I was, I could never be good enough in my father’s eyes. It created this intense amount of pressure that made me feel a need to be validated, which I later realized led to my perfectionism.

I remember during one of my baseball games, I was at bat and there was a lot of pressure on me to get an RBI in order to win the game. I hit a single rather than a triple, just like my father had expected. He then said to me, “Are you a man or a mouse?” Being 13-years-old, I didn’t understand the phrase at the time but somehow knew it made me feel less capable and ultimately defeated because I couldn’t compete in a man’s world.

As I got older, my dad’s drill sergeant voice stayed stuck in my head throughout any sport I would try to play, be it basketball, soccer, volleyball, etc.

He had convinced me that in order to be the best of the best, that required me having to look fit and eat fit. It created this immense pressure for me to be sure that I was the best of the best in order to succeed in sports.

So, when I had reached a certain age I was told that I could no longer play baseball during high school because I was a female. Therefore, I joined the softball team instead and my perception on sports changed forever.

I was constantly surrounded by females who were all equally as talented as me, and somehow I didn’t feel I could fit in. I had the perception that if I could survive most of my childhood playing baseball, softball was just not going to cut it for me. I wanted to join the baseball team at school because that’s what made sense to me. However, all the men in my life, whether it be my father, brother, male friends or male coaches, were all persistent in the idea that baseball was a man’s sport and softball was a female’s sport.

It was in that moment that I knew what being a man versus a mouse meant. I understood that most men, or at least my dad felt threatened when a woman could keep up in a sport where men are supposed to dominate. There was no grey area between softball and baseball. It was a black and white concept, just like being a man or a mouse.

I was 15-years-old once I came to this realization, and I started to correlate how much gender had to do with opportunity in sports for females. My brother was being looked at by division one colleges for baseball, yet I pursued a career in choir because that was the kind of role females should be in, according to everyone I knew at the time.

Now that I’ve developed into a grown woman, I look at the female athletes here at Fresno State and find myself wondering if that could have been me. If I didn’t grow up around men who were convinced that certain sports were a man’s sport, I could have pursued more of my life as an athlete.

I am here to tell you that if anyone belittles your athleticism or capabilities because of gender, they are absolutely in the wrong.

The female athletes here on this campus are more important than they know.  Afterall, they are setting examples for youth and future generations by breaking gender stereotypes within sports.

Even though I didn’t go on to be an athlete in my life, I am inspired by the bravery and pride of female athletes who fight to do so for the rest of us.