Author: Ellyn Ritterskamp

This is the final story in the SLR Original series on Title IX (See previous) Lastly, we come to Havana Blum, one of the youngest athletes I know. She’s 10, and after my mom met Havana’s at a Shakespeare festival in 2012, my parents have become surrogate grandparents for Havana and her siblings, all actors…

This is the tenth story in the SLR Original series on Title IX  (See previous) Christian “Crit” Hithe is a UNC-Charlotte basketball player who had transferred from another college and was sitting out for an NCAA-mandated year when I met her at the university, where she took my ethics class. Like Vicky Bullett, Hithe has…

This is the ninth story in the SLR Original series on Title IX  (See previous) Like Elwood and myself, former WNBA guard Vicky Bullett grew up in a post-Title IX sports environment, and turned it into a sporting life many of us would have dreamed of. I was raised Seventh-day Adventist, so I never asked…

This is the eighth story in the SLR Original series on Title IX  (See previous) Angie Elwood (at the time, she was Angie Little) was my classmate at Piedmont High School in Monroe, N.C., in the early 1980s. She played seemingly every sport there was, and was a strong student. We had a class or…

This is the seventh story in the SLR Original series on Title IX  (See previous)   In my years at the Charlotte Observer, I’ve run into many characters, but few have the presence of Marjo Rankin. I was 5’11” at age 14, and people on the shorter end of the spectrum still sometimes make me…

This is the sixth story in the SLR Original series on Title IX  (See previous) Way before my days of tackle football and slow-pitch softball, as a kid, I heard stories of my mom playing basketball in junior high. It was the late 50s and early 60s, but I didn’t understand that there was no…