My Experience With Cultural Blindness

I come from a small town in Southern Ohio. My town is the kind of town where many men still have the belief from the Stone Age, that a woman's place is in the home and that is all a woman is good for. There are a lot of men in my hometown that think that women can't excel academically and be an athlete. Those are beliefs that I have tried to prove wrong my entire life. At my high school one of the things that girls were expected to do was to become a cheerleader. I was never interested in cheer leading, I was always interested in playing sports such as basketball, soccer, and softball. From fourth grade until I graduated I played softball and basketball. I also played soccer from my freshman year through senior year. There would always be guys in my class that would tease me and say that "girls are inadequate at sports" and it's pointless for us to play sports because we would never be successful. Those types of comments would upset me and just fuel my determination to keep working hard and prove them wrong. I would also get teased for studying so much for school, and always having the highest grades in my classes.
When I played soccer the girls had to practice with the boys because our teams were so small. The boys would always complain about having to practice with us because we were considered "wimps" and they didn't think we could keep up with them. I proved a lot of guys wrong at soccer practices because I could always keep up and there were several times when I outran, or knocked down some of the biggest guys on the team. They were so embarrassed that I, a girl, could beat them and even take them down to the ground. There were quite a few guys that were scared to go up against me on defense because I could be so aggressive. I really surprised a lot of them because they didn't think that a girl could be so brutal at sports. I gained a lot of respect with the guys at my school for being able to keep up with them and show that women shouldn't be considered inadequate at sports.
Even though most of the teams I played on in high school weren't the best teams in the league, I still had some successes playing for them. My junior and senior year I made the Southern Hills League All-Star team for soccer. Senior year my school nominated me to be their representative for the Wendy's Heisman which was a great honor. Also I received an award from the Ohio Athletic Association for my perfect grade point average. Those awards made me feel proud to be a woman and helped shut up the guys that teased me throughout school that a woman couldn't possibly accomplish those things. I was also ranked number one in my senior class. I showed a lot of men and also women that a woman can succeed academically and athletically. I like to think that I am an inspiration to younger girls back home that face some of the same adversity that I faced in school.