A fight for respect that never ends

When a little girl hits the only home run during third-grade coed PE, jaws drop. Not in awe of her athletic prowess, but in disbelief and, in some cases, resentment of it.

Despite my classmate Kyle’s enthusiastic high-five and “Nice hit!” praise on the schoolyard that day, he felt inclined to add one thing: “for a girl.” To this day, that’s the part I remember most vividly from what was otherwise a shining moment in the mid-’80s.

Two events from last weekend had me revisiting that day. Ronda Rousey headlined the first-ever Ultimate Fighting Championship women’s fight and Danica Patrick started from the pole in the Daytona 500 race. Both were monumental for women and for sports. For female athletes, though, these events lit a much more meaningful torch.

Exhibit A: Patrick got me, a brown person, to care about a NASCAR race. Exhibit B: Rousey influenced me, a woman who dials 911 at the thought of violence-inflicted blood, to take an interest in the UFC.

Neither sport appeals to me otherwise. But as someone familiar with the male disregard, and sometimes disdain, of female athleticism, I was all in.

Softball came into my life at age 7. All-Stars, an accelerated team and the varsity squad of my high school in Phoenix, where girls train year-round, followed.

There were many Kyle’s along the way, including my own father, who initially viewed his daughter’s newfound sport on par with her walking around the house in his cowboy boots: adorable. Until he heard the crack of my bat and felt the fire of my throw.

That’s just it. Little girl athletes never finish proving themselves. They never stop trying to get the right people’s attention. They grow into athletes who feel they have to pose nude on the cover of ESPN’s Body issue to finally get folks asking, “Now who is this Ronda girl?” Rousey said in a prefight interview on HBO’s “Real Sports” that she had to expose herself to get exposure.

She got the right person’s attention. Dana White, UFC president, took her to dinner last summer and told her he changed his mind about refusing female fighters. She’d be the first.

Rousey took out her opponent Liz Carmouche with her signature arm-bar move in the first round of last week’s fight in Anaheim, Calif. She also sold out the Honda Center and brought in 40 percent more pay-per-view sales than UFC’s last card. And she did it by fighting like a girl.

Patrick made history, too, but don’t tell ESPN commentator Stephen A. Smith that. He dumped on Patrick, the first woman to finish in the final 10 of the Daytona 500, for not placing higher than eighth.

As Smith insisted Monday morning on “First Take” that he was rooting for Patrick, he also lambasted the public for celebrating a finishing spot seven places behind the one that counts. He criticized Patrick — who said postrace she “had a feeling I was gonna get freight-trained” — for holding back in her last few laps, dropping five places.

For Smith, and anyone who shares his opinion, not to recognize Patrick’s feat as a landmark accomplishment is to entirely dismiss that she did it in a male-dominated sport while competing against males. The only scenario that would justify a complete disregard for a woman placing eighth in NASCAR’s most coveted race would be one in which all drivers remove their helmets and shake out a head of long locks. A scenario in which all racers wear a uniform built for breasts. A scenario in which all drivers push their street car’s pedals with pumps.

From what I learned about NASCAR in following this race, winning often depends on the help of other drivers. As long as those drivers are men, who will have to say they got beat by a girl, I fear she’ll never win.

But just as Rousey proved White wrong when he said women would never fight in the UFC, I hope Patrick does the same.

When and if she does, I have no doubt some people will praise her for driving a fine race, but feel inclined to add “for a girl.” Unlike the UFC, some fights never end.

Contact Xazmin Garza at xgarza@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0477. Follow her on Twitter @startswithanx.