I’ve talked about trends and tropes I’ve used in my fiction. Here’s another one. Let’s start with Offline:

[Lucy] played basketball in high school. She was a dependable bench player who was strong on defense and had a good outside jump shot. She had no qualms about taking on a man, so she challenged Terry to a game one day after work.

And Doria:

Carla unzipped her warm up jacket, slipped off her flats, and pulled down her warm up pants. She stepped out to the mat wearing only her form-fitting yellow leotard with the green and red stripes.

The bright lights from the ceiling of the stadium bore down on her, making her black hair glisten. Through the glare, she could still see the Chilean flags and the anger in the spectators’ faces.

And Amiga:

“You must have been on your school’s swim team.” She took a sip of ice tea.

“I was busy with academics. I swim for fun.”

And The Remainders:

Her sports trophies were equally impressive. They were all from basketball and softball. Muriel played softball too, but Pearl’s trophies were more impressive. Her tallest said, “Most Valuable Player, Valley Mission League.” Pearl would have kicked my sister’s ass in softball.

And Christina’s Portrait:

Georgia’s varsity basketball uniform was the same as the JV one from last year. A t-shirt in white polyester mesh with tiny holes and a navy crew collar. Navy shorts with white piping along the bottom. White knee-high socks with three stripes of navy, Columbia blue, and navy. She kept the same number from last year, 58. The difference was that Georgia got to move up.

And my work in progress, Escape from Arzack’s Castle:

I offered to quit softball and go to work part time to help pay the bills. But Dad didn’t want me to quit. I didn’t expect to get a scholarship or build a career out of softball, but Dad knew how much I loved playing.

In fact, every female main character in my novels played a sport when they were younger. Why? Like most things that have to do with my writing, it started in high school.

I had a huge crush on this one girl who was on the girls’ basketball team, so I went to her games. In Christina’s Portrait, I described someone like me as one of “the lovelorn hoping to see their crushes in basketball shorts.” But I soon became impressed with the skill and excitement of their games. The girls were just as aggressive as the guys and as capable of nailing their shots and making great plays. Female athletes don’t just look good in sports uniforms; they deserve respect.

I gained so much of an appreciation of female athletes that I married a woman who lettered in swimming in high school and was on the prestigious Mission Viejo Nadadores swim team.

Besides my appreciation of female athletes, there are reasons I include them in fiction.

My characters go through challenging situations in my novels. Some of these challenges require physical strength and stamina, but all of them require mental toughness, quick thinking, teamwork, determination, and a willingness to persist despite setbacks. People can develop these skills by playing sports.

In some cases, characters use skills they gained playing sports in the situations they face. My main character in Escape from Arzack’s Castle, Julie Rubin, played softball through high school. In the climactic battle in her billionaire CEO’s real-life recreation of a video game, she uses her softball skills to save herself and her friends:

I picked up the handle of the torch and ran towards the others. With the bats now visible, they were easier targets. I smacked them like they were hanging fastballs.

Unfortunately, we can’t have a discussion about female athletes these days without someone questioning what a “real woman” is. There’s a lot to say about the misogyny behind that question, as well as the hypocrisy of those proclaiming they want to “protect girls and women” while wanting to strip them of all of their rights. If someone is willing to deny the humanity of one group of people, they’re willing to deny it to lots of others. If you truly support women’s sports, you should protect the rights of all female-presenting people. Women have long fought against prejudice to get the right to play. We can’t afford to regress now.

That’s another quality of the heroes of my stories: They’re willing to stand up for the marginalized and downtrodden. Likewise, in sports, you pick up all of your teammates, including the benchwarmers and those in a slump, because you never know when they will come through when you need them the most.

The last time I went to a girls’ basketball game was around 18 years ago when I took my daughter to see her friend play at a high school tournament. This was one of the few times as a teenager she actually wasn’t embarrassed that I was in the vicinity (as long as I sat at the far end of the parents’ section). The game was even more aggressive than the ones I saw at high school. One of the players had her contact lens knocked out. But it was great to see the girls play with the same determination and effort as my friends and their opponents did a long time ago.

So here’s to the female athletes. May you continue to be the stars of the stories that you create for yourselves.