pubertyâtricky for a girl like me who could still beat the boys.
5
You Let Some GIRL Beat You?
âTo be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.â
~ E.E. Cummings
Junior high was when everything started changing. I continued to compete at sports, but now I did it wearing blue eye shadow. I also let my hair grow. I wanted to look pretty like my older sister, Cathy, but it was Davidâs comment that set the transformation in motion. I wanted to be like others girls and have boys start noticing me for more than just the way I hit my jumper, went long for a pass, or because I had set a High Jump record at the Junior Olympics.
While making the Olympics in the High Jump event was still my dream, I liked the idea of playing just one sport as much as Liz Taylor liked the idea of marrying just one man. So once I turned thirteen and became old enough, I joined the same AAU Basketball team that my oldest sister, Patty, was on. By my freshman year in high school I was also playing volleyball, softball, field hockey, tennis, and badminton.
Whenever I couldnât find anyone to practice with, I practiced alone. Because I was so shy growing up, my imagination helped me a lot. When I was by myself shooting hoops, in my head I was always taking the last shot with the clock winding down. I was playing against the NBA greats of the day, and swish! Meyers makes the winning shot. Or I would step up to the free-throw line, down one, and I had to make two free-throws to win the game.
When I ran around a track, I pretended to be racing against someone like Wilma Rudolph. If I was hitting the tennis ball against the garage door, my imagination had me volleying against Billie Jean King before a crowd of thousands.
There simply werenât enough hours in the day to compete at all the sports I loved, and there was no way to devote the necessary time to tennis when the demands from the various teams I belonged to were becoming even more intense. My coaches allowed me to miss practice in one sport, knowing I had a match in another, but missing practices in tennis will only take you so far. I never got better than becoming the #2 player, and by now I was used to being #1. It was a painful lesson in focus and the necessary reduction that comes at a certain point in almost every athleteâs life. I loved tennis, but not enough to give up the other sports I loved, especially since my high school was known for its basketball program.
While I was a freshman at Sonora High, David was a seniorâbut not just any senior. He was the star 6â6â starting forward. Since I played just about every sport the school offered, I was in the paper a lot. But each article about me would start, âAnn Meyers, sister of David Meyersâ¦âIt was great that my oldest sister, Patty, had been a star basketball player and championship winner at Cal State Fullerton, and my older brother, Mark, had been a star football player at UC Berkeley, but David was there at Sonora with me , so there was no degree of separation. The idea of being in high school with the brother I still idolized had sounded great, but the reality was something different.
The high school star, the MVP, the team captain, the CIF Champion was my brother. It was like having to stand next to a giant, and I felt small and inconsequential, certain that the only reason anyone bothered to speak to me at Sonora was because I was David Meyersâs little sister. So when Darlene May, the PE coach at Cornelia Connelly, an all-girl Catholic High School in Anaheim, asked me to transfer my sophomore year, I gave it some serious thought.
Darlene had played sports with my sister, Patty, and was the first woman to officiate a menâs international game. She didnât stop there; she also became the first female to officiate an
5
You Let Some GIRL Beat You?
âTo be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.â
~ E.E. Cummings
Junior high was when everything started changing. I continued to compete at sports, but now I did it wearing blue eye shadow. I also let my hair grow. I wanted to look pretty like my older sister, Cathy, but it was Davidâs comment that set the transformation in motion. I wanted to be like others girls and have boys start noticing me for more than just the way I hit my jumper, went long for a pass, or because I had set a High Jump record at the Junior Olympics.
While making the Olympics in the High Jump event was still my dream, I liked the idea of playing just one sport as much as Liz Taylor liked the idea of marrying just one man. So once I turned thirteen and became old enough, I joined the same AAU Basketball team that my oldest sister, Patty, was on. By my freshman year in high school I was also playing volleyball, softball, field hockey, tennis, and badminton.
Whenever I couldnât find anyone to practice with, I practiced alone. Because I was so shy growing up, my imagination helped me a lot. When I was by myself shooting hoops, in my head I was always taking the last shot with the clock winding down. I was playing against the NBA greats of the day, and swish! Meyers makes the winning shot. Or I would step up to the free-throw line, down one, and I had to make two free-throws to win the game.
When I ran around a track, I pretended to be racing against someone like Wilma Rudolph. If I was hitting the tennis ball against the garage door, my imagination had me volleying against Billie Jean King before a crowd of thousands.
There simply werenât enough hours in the day to compete at all the sports I loved, and there was no way to devote the necessary time to tennis when the demands from the various teams I belonged to were becoming even more intense. My coaches allowed me to miss practice in one sport, knowing I had a match in another, but missing practices in tennis will only take you so far. I never got better than becoming the #2 player, and by now I was used to being #1. It was a painful lesson in focus and the necessary reduction that comes at a certain point in almost every athleteâs life. I loved tennis, but not enough to give up the other sports I loved, especially since my high school was known for its basketball program.
While I was a freshman at Sonora High, David was a seniorâbut not just any senior. He was the star 6â6â starting forward. Since I played just about every sport the school offered, I was in the paper a lot. But each article about me would start, âAnn Meyers, sister of David Meyersâ¦âIt was great that my oldest sister, Patty, had been a star basketball player and championship winner at Cal State Fullerton, and my older brother, Mark, had been a star football player at UC Berkeley, but David was there at Sonora with me , so there was no degree of separation. The idea of being in high school with the brother I still idolized had sounded great, but the reality was something different.
The high school star, the MVP, the team captain, the CIF Champion was my brother. It was like having to stand next to a giant, and I felt small and inconsequential, certain that the only reason anyone bothered to speak to me at Sonora was because I was David Meyersâs little sister. So when Darlene May, the PE coach at Cornelia Connelly, an all-girl Catholic High School in Anaheim, asked me to transfer my sophomore year, I gave it some serious thought.
Darlene had played sports with my sister, Patty, and was the first woman to officiate a menâs international game. She didnât stop there; she also became the first female to officiate an
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