In seventh grade I tried out for the cheerleading squad. It's what girls did, especially those who wanted to be popular. Girls rooted for the boys who played the games. On NFL sidelines and near midline of basketball arenas, scantily clad women still do. Perhaps this is why I like baseball best.
By eighth grade, I left cheerleading behind, forever, and was playing on the girls' basketball team. No one showed up to watch our games except an occasional mom. Mine arrived with younger siblings who could never sit still and sometimes ran onto the court, so my mom had to leave. We didn't have cheerleaders jumping up to spell A-M-H-E-R-S-T when our team took a time out. The cheerleaders only cheered for the boys.
In the memoir I'm writing, I reflect how the rules governing girls' play on the basketball court echoed through our lives as girls off the court. Let's start with how we had to play: