THE GIRLS OF SUMMER

By RICHARD ZOGLIN/ATLANTA

As a hard-throwing 10-year-old growing up in Orlando, Florida, Dot Richardson wanted to play Little League baseball. But a coach said she'd have to cut her hair first and call herself Bob. Dot passed up that invitation and opted for girls' softball instead. Two decades and a gold medal later, she notes that things have improved for sports-minded girls. "You can see the change in women's athletics," she says. "Young girls today have more opportunities than I ever had."

Richardson had her opportunity in the third inning of the gold-medal game between the U.S. and China. With a runner on first in a scoreless game, she lifted a fly ball deep down the right-field line. As it sailed toward the foul pole, the exuberant 5-ft. 5-in. shortstop crouched low on the base path (so the home-plate umpire could see better, she later explained), then leaped in the air as the ball was ruled fair. The Chinese team disputed the call for 10 minutes, to no avail, and the homer provided the winning 3-1 score, bringing the favored U.S. team a long-awaited gold medal.

Viewers may have had trouble seeing it on NBC's equally disputed TV coverage (which opted for flashy individual performances on the track and in the diving pool over less glamorous team efforts), but sisterhood was powerful at the Atlanta Games. Sparked by Richardson, and by dominating pitching from Lisa Fernandez and Michele Granger, the U.S. softball team survived some low-scoring squeakers (and a 2-1 loss to Australia in extra innings) to capture the first Olympic gold medal ever awarded in the sport. The U.S. women's soccer team also dispatched the world's top teams, including Norway (which had beaten them in last year's world championships) and China in a hard fought 2-1 final, on the way to America's first soccer gold medal. Along with the women gymnasts, who had captured a team gold the previous week, the gold medal-winning synchronized swimmers and the powerful U.S. women's basketball team--which showed that Olympic hoops can actually be fun and not just a marketing exercise--these were sister acts worth standing in line for.

The acts have been in rehearsal for a long time. The core of the U.S. soccer team has been together since December 1990, when it was formed in anticipation of the 1991 world championships. With only a $1,000-a-month stipend for living expenses, most of the team members had to move in with parents or depend on spouses for support, and the team had to play most of its games outside the U.S. to draw any crowds. Though they captured the world title in 1991, the U.S. players still won little fame and no full-time jobs. The team virtually disbanded for two years before reassembling for the 1995 world championships. "We are here because we love to play the game," says team captain Carla Overbeck. "For years we played for nothing. But we played because of the friendships."

The basketball team, too, seemed refreshingly infused with team spirit, particularly compared with the ego-dominated Dream Team. "We don't want to take anything away from the guys," says forward Katrina McClain. "I love to watch them play myself. But we've been together a lot longer. We're more of a team than they are." So much of a team that their most famous member, Rebecca Lobo, didn't see much playing time, as coach Tara VanDerveer sacrificed a little star power for more speed on the court. "The joy of the party is just being with each other," says Teresa Edwards, 32, the veteran guard who was playing in her fourth Olympics. "It's a family atmosphere."

Which doesn't mean that stars haven't broken out. Chief among them is Richardson, who at 34 was the oldest member of the U.S. softball team and almost certainly its perkiest. A former college star at UCLA, she continued to play through medical school, and now works as an orthopedic surgeon. To train for the Olympics, she took a one-year leave of absence from her residency at the University of Southern California; two days after the gold-medal victory, she returned to her rounds at the hospital. Or at least tried to. The hospital held a congratulatory press conference; the USC band serenaded her outside the hospital; and she got a standing ovation at Dodger stadium. The celebration continues this week with a trip to Disney World, a visit with President Clinton and an appearance on David Letterman. "It's been a whirlwind," says Richardson. "But going on my rounds, I realized it's not the end for anything, it's the beginning."

What accounts for the U.S. women's sudden success? At least in part it's the result of social changes that no longer make it necessary for little girls to cut their hair to play ball. "In the 20 years since I competed, a great deal has changed," says Anita DeFrantz, a member of the bronze medal-winning U.S. rowing team in 1976 and now one of two American members of the International Olympic Committee. "The way society views women has changed for the better. Funding for sports has changed for the better. And the potential for women to survive--if not make a living--in sports has increased because the U.S.O.C. has been able to finance more of them."

Gender prejudices have also been oddly helpful to women in certain sports. While baseball is still mainly a guy's game, softball has a genially coed tradition in America; women's softball became an Olympic sport this year after a long campaign by U.S. officials that began in the 1960s. Soccer is wildly popular in Latin America and Europe, of course--but only for men, not for women. In America, by contrast, men's soccer is still struggling for attention, while schoolgirls play the sport avidly. "There were no inhibitions for girls to play when we were young," says Julie Foudy, 25, a nine-year veteran of the U.S. national team. "I grew up in Southern California, and everybody plays. There's a great grass-roots program."

The fact that women are still fighting to escape the shadow of men's sports may also help foster a tighter team spirit. "Women have a much better comfort zone with each other than men do," says Edwards, of the basketball squad. "Men have that macho thing going on." The comfort zone extends to their sisters in other sports. "I loved seeing the softball team win last night. It's great that the women are doing so well," said Lisa Leslie, in response to a reporter's question during a press conference after her record-setting 35-point performance against Japan. "I am ecstatic!" exclaimed softball infielder Julie Smith, 28, of the U.S. women's successes. "The gymnasts are awesome."

The crowds were pretty awesome too. Early on, perhaps unaware of how popular it would become, Olympic officials scheduled women's basketball at the tiny Morehouse College gym. By the second week, the U.S. team was drawing crowds of more than 30,000 at the Georgia Dome, just like the Dream Team. The soccer finals drew 76,481 to Sanford Stadium in Athens, Georgia--the largest crowd ever to watch an Olympic soccer match. After the game fans shrieked over such team stalwarts as Mia Hamm and Shannon MacMillan as if they were rock stars. "I never thought there would be this many people to watch me do anything, let alone play soccer," said goalkeeper Briana Scurry. "It's a great thing for women's sports."

--Reported by Barry Hillenbrand, Susanna Schrobsdorff and Steve Wulf/Atlanta

With reporting by BARRY HILLENBRAND, SUSANNA SCHROBSDORFF AND STEVE WULF/ATLANTA