Mom helped open doors to sports

Lora Jean Curtis would have been a phenomenal track athlete. She probably would have been pretty good at softball, basketball or volleyball as well.

Unfortunately for her, she grew up in the 1950s and '60s when those opportunities for women were few to non-existent.

She grew up extremely poor in Heber City and gravitated to the activities that embraced women at that time — drill team, pep club and the band.

Her older sister, Arlene, was actually the athlete, and after they'd both married and had a couple of children, Leanie talked Jeanne into joining a women's softball team in a league organized by the county.

She still talks about those "glory days" and laughs about how once in a while onlookers would taunt Arlene about her gender after she smacked the ball farther than most men could.

While many women of my mother's generation settled into domestic life with a resignation that motherhood meant giving up your own games, Jeanne Donaldson made no such transition. She had three children by the time Congress passed Title IX, and she had no idea how the legislation would change the opportunities for her five daughters.

It didn't matter what the government did, she was busy having a good time on softball fields and in bowling alleys.

Having children didn't slow her down; it only made her more creative. She could clean her house, cook dinner, work full time, organize the lives of her six children and still make her own softball practices and games and rock her weekly bowling league.

My father was my first softball coach, but it was my mother who guided us to a winning season and an opportunity to play on an all-star team.

My dad is the kind of sports fan who will watch any kind of competition — wrestling, baseball, football, boxing, arm-wrestling, Tough Man contests — he loves it all. My mom would join him in front of the television, but she was more interested in the stories of the players than the stories of their play.

My father's influence molded me into a sports fan; my mother's example turned me into an athlete. One of my fondest memories is playing on a team with my parents when I was 16 years old. To this day, I have never seen a better pitcher in slow-pitch softball than my mother. I have also never met a better sport.