The Power Of Play

The 1996 Olympics by Kelli Anderson

Yale Rowers by Michael Bamberger

Maria Pepe by Melissa Segura

The Title IX Babies by Phil Taylor

Political Football by Alexander Wolff

Battle of the Sexes by L. Jon Wertheim

The AIAW by George Dohrmann

Father Figures by Alexander Wolff

Sharon Berg by Nancy Ramsey

At night, when practice was over, the dreaming would begin. After Tara VanDerveer and the three Indiana basketball teammates she roomed with in the winter of 1974 had wolfed down plates of Hamburger Helper, they'd sit around their dinette table and ask, What if? What if they could have gotten scholarships? What if they traveled by air instead of vans, competed in sold-out arenas, were seen by far-flung friends and relatives on TV? Imagine getting paid to play! A pro draft! "We'd laugh about it," says VanDerveer, now 27 years into her tenure as the women's basketball coach at Stanford. "At the time it was all total, total fantasy."