The Extra Mile: Running through Title IX: '... a matter of what I wanted'

At age 12, Pam Collins Rhodes sat on the bleachers and watched a junior high school boys track team practice. When it ended, she stepped onto the track and repeated their practice on her own. It was in the early 1970s, and girls weren’t included in organized school sports.To Rhodes, it “was what it was,” and she thought nothing of gender inequality. But she knew she loved to run and today laughs, asking, “What were men afraid of? That we couldn’t run? Whatever the rationalization was ... it didn’t matter. You didn’t think about why you couldn’t do it, you just knew you couldn’t. But if it was something inside of you that you wanted to do, it didn’t matter that you were a woman.