PARIS — We talk a lot about how the U.S. women’s national team inspires millions of young girls (and boys), and that’s obviously a fantastic thing. But it’s only part of the story. The USWNT has a similar impact on American women (and men) who are a lot older than that, too, even people in their 80s.
One of them was my mother.
Helen Wahl grew up in the Midwest during the 1930s and ’40s. She loved sports—playing them, watching them—and one of her first jobs was as a physical education teacher at a school. But she grew frustrated by the lack of opportunities for women to compete in sports (both recreationally and professionally), to say nothing of the way men talked to her about sports, as if she couldn’t know anything because of her gender.