I can’t tell you why exactly, but I’m especially struck by how young women play sports.

It may have to do with stories my mom Cate told me of her playing basketball in her youth during the 1940s and some of the rules they played under like six players to a side, some of whom weren’t allowed to cross half-court. Cate didn’t particularly seem fond of having to wear bloomers in gym class, either.

Or it might have to do with my sister Anne Marie’s pure sprinting prowess as a schoolgirl in the 1970s. Easily the fastest girl at Binkley Elementary School, only one other person in the entire school, Stuart Kessler, was faster than her and not by much.

In any case, I’m interested by a girl’s/woman’s drive to perform well on the athletic stage.

For example: Last May I was in Lakewood for the Colorado State High School Track & Field Championships. I was there to get a photo of Megan Patterson, a 15 year-old sophomore from Pueblo who was competing in the Class 3A shot put. She won the event easily and in doing so, set a Class 3A record; she put the shot 44 feet 11 and 1/4 inches.

A mighty feat, yes, and she had the crowd buzzing. Stepping away from the ring, I noticed the teenager’s reaction to her record setting throw. There was no bravado, no fist pump as the referee called the mark. She didn’t seem to disbelieve what had just happened, either. It was more akin to coyness from having excelled in front of so many people. It only lasted a few moments before she took a seat as the competition continued.

I photographed Meagan’s last throws as well and I was taken by the contrast–and symmetry– of the intensity of her actually competing and the modesty of her response to it; it was like night and day.

I’ve gone through my archive and pulled some pictures of girls and women participating in sport and then went through the Library of Congress Digital Collections looking for similar imagery from the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries. Comparing the eras, two things immediately jumped out at me: the uniforms girls wear these days are less restrictive as is the photographic technology used to capture their exploits.

Further, innovations such as Title IX made huge impacts on women’s athletics but after looking at the photo Virginia Smoot being tagged out at third by Mabel Harvey in 1925 and the picture of Savannah Byers getting tagged out at third in 2004, not much has changed in the manner in which athletics are played out.

This wasn’t scholarly research by any stretch but based on what I’ve seen it’s safe to say that as long as there’s been leisure time, girls have always enjoyed athletic competition. And given the means to hone an athletic skill—equipment, facilities, coaching—some girls become rather deft at it.

And become stronger women doing so.