Around primetime on a recent Monday night, Tyrone Smith was at home in Peabody watching the Tennessee-Rutgers women's college basketball game.
He eats up that kind of stuff.
Tyrone grew up watching the girls play. His sister, Michelle, was one of the best athletes - male or female - to step on the court for the Lynn Classical Rams. It started when they were kids in the '70s and Michelle begged her dad to be on Tyrone's Little League baseball team. She ended up being a starting pitcher.
Of all his sister's accomplishments, the most memorable for Tyrone Smith are the Hall of Fame inductions, both at Classical and Brown University. Of the 161 members of the Lynn Classical Hall of Fame, 19 are women; of those, 17 were inducted after Title IX, the law barring gender discrimination in education, including school sports. Smith was honored in 1992.
Looking at Hall of Fame numbers from schools around the area, a pattern is clear: Because more women played after Title IX, there have been more inducted since the law was passed in 1972.
When Michelle Smith graduated in 1982, she had become the first girls' basketball player to score 1,000 points at Classical. Just to put the accomplishment in perspective, there was no such thing as a 3-point line when she played, and when she racked up all her 1,170 points, Classical was a three-year school, not the current four.
It still amazes Tyrone, watching games on ESPN and seeing some 19,000 people go nuts for women's sports. Mostly because it wasn't like that when his sister played.
"You didn't see a lot of girls doing these things back then," he said. "They were playing basketball, but it wasn't as big as what it is now."
Back then, the doors were just opening.
Sports took Michelle Smith from a Little League pitcher's mound to the hardwood at Lynn Classical; to the arena at Brown University; to exhibition games in South America; and to professional basketball in Europe.
"It's more of a journey than anything," Tyrone said. "Just watching her journey. Watching her progress, seeing how good she got."
Michelle Smith graduated from Classical a decade after the institution of Title IX and was a poster child for the intent behind the amendment, which is equal opportunity across genders.
Opportunity, of course, creates more, so the 6-foot-1-inch Smith was able to turn a successful athletic and academic career at Classical into scholarship offers from Syracuse, Old Dominion, Boston College, and Brown, the Providence school where she became a three-time Ivy League all-star and led the Bears to their first league basketball title while being named Ivy Player of the Year in 1984. Women's college basketball continues to grow, but 22 years after her final game, Smith remains the sixth-leading scorer in Brown history with 1,291 points.
"I believe that sports is universal," she said. "So it's truly been amazing to me how the platform of sports could literally take you traveling around the world and beyond your wildest dreams, and to experience things not only on the highest athletic platform, but also to experience different cultures."
The Women's Sports Foundation has a long list of benefits for women participating in sports. Being on the field or court increases self-esteem and confidence, boosts grades and graduation rates, decreases the likelihood of irresponsibility, and puts girls on an equal platform with boys at an early age so that they still see themselves as equals as adults and professionals.
"It is no accident," the foundation writes on its website, womenssportsfoundation.org, "that 80 percent of the female executives at Fortune 500 companies identified themselves as former 'tomboys' having played sports."
Now 43 and a Dorchester resident, Smith knew when she was 14 that she wanted to be self-employed. She worked a few jobs to earn money to make ends meet, but in 1990 she started her company, the Mission Possible: Collaborative, a consulting service for business development, desktop publishing, marketing, and public relations that has worked closely with the Boston Learning Center and some start-up companies in the Boston area.
That team sports contributed to her life, she said, is obvious.
"Developing discipline, giving 110 percent effort when you're playing, whatever your sport is, and teamwork," she said, "but also recognizing what makes your team special, what makes you special, and knowing what your talents are and what your strengths are."
Gloucester's Kim Patience is one of two female athletic directors in the 12-school Northeastern Conference, along with Kim Kochanek at Salem High. Patience, who graduated in 1981, was a three-sport athlete at Gloucester in field hockey, softball, and basketball.
"Sports was definitely a huge influence on my life," she said. "I knew that's where I was headed and what I really enjoyed."
She is one of two female members of the school's Hall of Fame committee. "One of the purposes of being on the committee was making sure the members got a fair shake," she said.
"Are we getting the best of the best? I think so. I think it's difficult when you look at the women. They're not being presented. We're not getting [enough] women to nominate."
There are 128 inductees in Gloucester High's Hall of Fame: 14 are women. Swampscott is one of the few schools with an even number of inductees - 30 male and 30 female - and its committee makes a conscious effort to recognize athletes of both genders.
Still, Patience sees progress. More girls are just as single-minded as the boys these days, playing soccer every season they can.
But at the same time, when college recruiters come calling, they're usually asking about the football team or the boys' hockey players. "I think the opportunities for [the girls] are still not as comparable as the boys," Patience said.
Progress may be inherently slow, but Tyrone Smith is a sign that it exists. He is a man, with as much if not greater appreciation for female athleticism than male, and he gained that appreciation by watching his sister become one of the most dominant athletes he's ever seen.
"I love to see the evolution of women's sports," said Tyrone, 41.
"I just think it's tremendous to see women have opportunities they didn't have. And if it took Title IX, then so be it."
One year, Tyrone got so tired of seeing the local papers put together their greatest athletes' lists and consistently exclude his sister that he went to one of them to let them know about her.
The paper wrote a story about Michelle, and he saved it and gave it to her for Christmas.
"They didn't mention her a lot," Tyrone said. "It bothered me because if you ask me about her game, it was ridiculous what she could do. But they didn't mention her. If they had had the WNBA when my sister was around, my sister would have been in the WNBA. No doubt about it, she would have been drafted. Easy."
The Smiths now have a cousin, Jarell Bird, on the boys team at Classical. Every so often they'll check in to see him, but also to see history.
"Anytime I go back," Tyrone said. "I'll tell people, 'Look up at that little banner over there. In 1982, she was the first woman to score 1,000 points.' That will always be up there, long after we're gone. That banner will always be up there."
Julian Benbow can be reached at jbenbow@globe.com or 978-646-3927.
