Back in 1938, 10-year-old Carol Clark and a friend were leaning on the fence of the Wyoming Golf Course, watching men play when one man uttered a string of obscenities. A few days later, the girls received letters from a course judge forbidding them to lean on fences or observe play on Saturday morning. Female access to the course, the letter reminded, was restricted to after noon on Sunday.

VOICES

Some views to the future "I would like to see sports driven from a competitive standpoint rather than from a revenue standpoint. Women's teams compete with the same intensity and love for the sport as do men's teams, but they're not able to draw 1,000 people to watch them." Dawn Rogers, athletic director, Xavier University --- "For female basketball players, I'd like to see improvement in teaching the fundamentals at the K-12 level so women can go on to a higher level of play when they reach Division I." Michelle Clark-Heard, assistant coach, women's basketball, University of Cincinnati --- "I would like to see young female athletes place more importance on conditioning, good nutritional habits and rest. Those habits will be of great benefit in later life." Maxine Hoyles Yates, president, Ohio Tennis Coaches Association and girls tennis coach, Sycamore High School --- "I'd like to see more fan support and media coverage of female sports, and I think they go hand in hand. They're both pluses because they help young female athletes realize there's a value in what they do, that it has validity with the outside world." Rose Koch, former volleyball coach, Mother of Mercy High School Huge leap in numbers Nationally, teenage female participation in athletics has jumped - no, broad-jumped - practically tenfold since the passage of Title IX legislation. It grew from 294,015 in 1972 to an all-time high of 2,856,358 in 2003, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations. Nationally, most girl athletes participate in basketball, track and field, volleyball, softball and cross-country. State participation numbers aren't available for the 1970s, but since 1981, Ohio girls' participation in sports has increased by 26 percent and in Kentucky by 23 percent, according to the respective state high school athletics associations. Nationally, there are 1.1 million more male high school athletes than females, but since 1981 boys' participation has increased by 8 percent, as opposed to the 872 percent increase for girls. Olympian inequity In the Olympic Games, as in athletics in general, female participation has trailed that of males. Below is a sampling of the dates Olympic sports were added for men and for women: Men Women Basketball 1936 1976 Diving 1904 1912 Fencing (team events): 1906 1960 Rowing 1900 1976 Shooting 1896 1984* Soccer 1908 1996 Tennis** 1896 1896 Track and field 1896 1928 Weightlifting 1896 2000 *In some earlier Olympics, men and women competed together in shooting events. **Both men's and women's tennis were eliminated from the Olympics for more than 60 years. Both returned in 1988.

The letter still strikes a nerve in Carol Clark Johnson, now 76, but it never much got in her way. Not only did Johnson go on to play the course, but she played her way to the city junior championship, a 38-year membership in the LPGA and decades of golf coaching. Today she lives on the seventh hole of the Wyoming Golf Course, plays golf nearly every day, and has little time or interest in being a spectator to anything.

A half-mile away, Johnson's daughter Jan Patterson Bartel, who lives on the third hole of the course, is given to four fiercely played games of tennis, not golf, each week. Meanwhile, Jan's 16-year-old daughter Emily Patterson devotes herself to year-round soccer.

These three generations of devoted female athletes say sports have given them physical strength, mental confidence and years of female camaraderie. They say they can't image their lives - or family life - without it.

In the half-century that lies between Carol Johnson and Emily Patterson, a revolution has taken place in the world of female sport. As 257 female U.S. Olympians - 48 percent of the team - compete in the Games this week, it's likely that most had lifetime access to athletic teams and training. Indeed, most probably grew up with others leaning on fences to watch them play.

"In little more than a generation, young girls went from hoping there was a team to hoping they'd make the team," says Mary Jo Kane, director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sport at the University of Minnesota. "It generally doesn't occur to young girls today that opportunities wouldn't be available to them."

The catalyst for such change was Title IX, the 1972 federal legislation that prohibited discrimination in any educational program receiving federal aid. When the law opened up the door, girls rushed through it. Before Title IX, one in 27 females played a sport. Today one in three do. During the first year Title IX was in effect, female participation in high school sports shot up by 178 percent.

Title IX brought girls sports. And sports, Carol Johnson says, brought girls "everything." Fences literally and figuratively crashed down in ways that had huge emotional, physical and professional benefits for females. Today, 40,000 young women attend college on athletic scholarships, paving the way to professional careers.

Research shows female athletes, compared with female non-athletes:

• Get better grades.

• Are more highly motivated.

• Are less likely to abuse alcohol or other drugs.

• Are less likely to get pregnant as teen-agers.

Johnson's daughter, Carrie Smith, says sports gave her mother lifelong robust good health and "purpose." In turn, Johnson says they gave her granddaughter Emily Patterson indomitable confidence and self-reliance. "Emily knows who Emily is, and sports is a big reason why," she says emphatically.

Early battles could be costly

But the access young female athletes today take for granted came from the stubborn insistence of earlier generations of women. While Carol Johnson says she and her female Wyoming High School classmates enjoyed great access to sports, she admits they were a rarity - and that participation sometimes came at a cost.

Johnson was able to play high school golf only by joining the boys' team. She encountered no female opponents and, while she could play regular matches against other boys' teams, she couldn't compete in sectional tournaments.

Ladylike behavior was always an issue, says Johnson, who remembers the pain of being labeled a tomboy. "It made us feel we weren't feminine enough," she says. "They really laid that on you, and you had to be pretty strong to decide it didn't matter. Today they call the same kind of girls wonderful athletes."

Besides questioning their feminine behavior, adults clearly doubted girls' strength. Johnson's basketball team played half-court because coaches believed girls were not strong enough for full-court play. Still, it didn't occur to Johnson to rebel. "Oh, no, no," she says now. "You played the game, you didn't change the game."

Stereotypes about females' capabilities and even their sexual orientation have continued to plague girl athletes down through the ages. "It wasn't until the early 1980s that women were allowed to run the Olympic marathon - people just didn't believe they had the constitution to run that far," says Peter Roby, director of the Center for the Study of Sport and Society at Northeastern University. "The majority of members of rules committees and governing boards were men, and they decided what women were capable of."

Kane, from the University of Minnesota, says while girl athletes today enjoy far more acceptance - and sometimes adulation - they still can take criticism for being too aggressive or physically imposing.

"The more strong and athletic boys are, the more masculine they seem, which is seen as a good thing," Kane says. "But girls have to wonder, if they're too good or too muscular, if people will say they're gay."

But Jan Bartel, who graduated from Wyoming High School two years before Title IX was adopted, remembers enormous opportunity for female athletes and little discrimination. "In high school, I played volleyball, ran track, swam and played field hockey," she says. "I remember the coaches rotating gym time between boys and girls teams, and I think we had equal resources. We were never treated as second-class citizens."

'Sports made me stronger'

From left, Jan Patterson Bartel, 51, with her daughter Emily Patterson, 16, and mother Carol Clark Johnson, 76. (Enquirer photo/TONY JONES)

By the time Emily Patterson, 16, entered athletics, female sports had evolved to high-stakes, high-quality play. In her freshman year at Wyoming High School, to get to the state finals in soccer, her team played two 100-minute overtime games of intense play. "188 percent, that was our motto. Give it 188 percent," she says.

"Sports made me stronger, more able to push through things," she says. "When you're exhausted and you feel like you're going to be sick, but you're not being subbed, you learn to play it through."

Emily says girl jocks are "well-received and admirable" at her school. But she says female athletes face their own set of problems today. "There's a lot of competitiveness between girls, sometimes too much," says Emily, who suffered a season-ending injury in a match last year. "I've seen girls punch people. There's an anger, and I don't know where it comes from. ... Boys can be rough on the football field, but girls can be vicious."

Kane, of the University of Minnesota, agrees that, as girls' athletic opportunities have widened, so have their challenges. Rather than being able to play a variety of sports, girls today must specialize - sometime to their physical detriment. Moreover, girls in sports such as gymnastics face a higher risk of eating disorders or specific injuries.

And the darker side of male athletics is now finding its way into female sports. "We've seen the controversy with Marion Jones and steroid accusations, and I think we'll see more recruiting violations as the stakes get higher," Kane says. "The pressure has increased as well. Now if a girl isn't athletic, she'll face, 'What's wrong with you?' Opportunities have expanded, but girls are taking the good with the bad."

Still, the Johnson-Bartel-Patterson women of Wyoming are convinced that athletics play a powerful and highly positive role in girls' lives.

"I'm a competitive person. I don't gamble, don't play bingo, but I will bet every time on my ability to compete against anyone," Carol Johnson says, still beating women half her age on the golf course. "Look at (female golf legend) Babe Zaharias - she bashed the tar out of the ball."