There is baseball and softball. There is boys' basketball and girls' basketball. So if they're going to have a boys' soccer team, why not have a girls' team?

In boys, it's ingrained in their heads that to dunk is just the highlight of basketball, whereas for girls, our shooting technique, making baskets and free throws is taught more. It's such a sexist approach to the sport sometime. Men aren't encouraging their little girls to try to work on their hops. They're encouraging them to work on their jump shots and the fundamentals of the game.

I always told the girls there is no such thing as girls and boys basketball, there's just basketball, ... I told them to be physical and block out. There is only one way to play the game. One of the reasons is hopefully I was non-sexist. I taught them to play the game the same way I taught the boys. We were one of the first teams to play up-and-down, in-your-face defense. I used the same approach with the girls as I did with the boys' team.

In girls basketball, there's still a little more separation in the talent level among the teams. In boys, there's more parity across the board.

My parents didn't want me going to school here at first because they thought we weren't going to have a girls' team. They said, 'Why even come if you can't play soccer?' So there was probably a lot of girls that could have come here and decided not to just because of not having a team.

That was huge. At first, I was hoping there would be enough on the roster just to fill up a field.