by Dairne McLoughlin
“You can’t play. You’re a girl.”
That’s a refrain I heard for most of my young life growing up in the 50s and 60s. As a rough, tough scrapper of a tomboy, that was just a flag I wouldn’t fly by. This led to lots of trouble.
Every time I went to a playground or moved into a new neighborhood it was the same old thing: there was that one boy who said, “you can’t play, you’re a girl” as if I was unaware of my gender! Me being me, I resorted to what always seemed to change that narrative, I just hauled off and punched that boy right in the kisser, and then all the boys fought over whose team I would be on.
Unfortunately, there was always a next time. It got very tiring. It became especially tiring for my mom. She got the honor of distressed phone calls and moms showing up at our door telling her I had hurt their son. Oh, ‘boohoo ya big sissy’ was always my thought. My Mom did not share this sentiment. My mom was old school and had her thoughts about how a little girl should act. Well, I was not that kind of little girl. This caused a bit of friction between us throughout my young life.
I remember after one encounter when a mom showed up at our door with her little boy in tow, my mom turned to me and said, in a very exasperated and fed up kinda way, “Dairne, you have to stop beating up the boys.” Well, what could I say, that just wasn’t gonna happen.
My mom never quite understood that all I wanted to do was play baseball and football with the boys because I was super good at it. It’s something I excelled at, and I was better than so many of them; it just wasn’t fair.
In high school I played basketball, softball and field hockey and lettered in all three sports. In the 70’s when I was in college, I played pickup games of basketball every day with the guys. At first in those games there was always a jerk guy who thought he was really funny and said” okay our team will be shirts and your team can be skins”, (that was the team I was on). My thought: ‘ha- ha shut up and play so I can whip your ass.’ Those were the guys I always beat badly: big mouth, no game.
After college anywhere I lived I played on all men’s teams in flag football, soccer, basketball and baseball. Yes, it was always a fight. Looking back on it now and watching the growth of women’s sports all over the world, I like to think in some small way, that my never-ending battle for inclusion was part of the revolution of change. Oh, I also like to think my mom is proud of me.
Dairne McLoughlin likes to play golf, hike, and walk with her dog in the bosque. She also loves playing cards and getting together to cook and share meals with family and friends.