Here’s the story of the story. A few years ago, my life changed radically as I left the daily journalism business after 20-odd years to become a university professor at Penn State.

Through that process, I met and still meet many young women who aspire to be sports journalists, and would not — generally speaking — identify themselves as feminists. Yet they are strong women and see absolutely no reason they can’t work in the historically male dominated fields of sports and sports media (though the U.S. women just out-medaled the men in Rio). In a very matter-of-fact way, I started to hear stories about all the (excuse my language) bullshit they have to put up with from guys, and it was irritating. So, as I was thinking “What next?” for story ideas, I had the thought of doing a story that tried to capture a sense of the little slights female athletes and journalists put up with all the time, relying on fortitude and support. I don’t want to give them all the insults away, but obviously, for example, the boys varsity athletes get a ride back to school. The girls have to walk. And yet, as the story shows — and I wanted to stress it in my last line — it doesn’t bring them down.

I’ll say one more technique thing. I enjoyed writing first person plural, which I straight lifted from a great novel called, “Our Kind,” about aging women in Westchester County-ish by Kate Walbert. I highly recommend it. It’s the kind of book where I thought, “I have no interest in these people,” and wound up coming away with indelible images.

But let’s hear from you. What’s on your mind?