I have lived so much of my life through my feet. Football (soccer) has been a familiar part of my life since I was a young child. The ball at my feet, the running, and the wind tearing against my face-it is exhilarating! After playing, no matter how much I have run, or whether fatigue has weighed my body down, I still feel a buzz of energy in my body. Football is a quintessential part of my being. Football is my happiness. Although it started as something that built up my relationship with my father, it became something that, like my father when he was growing up in Ethiopia, became my favorite thing to do. Football also played a significant role in my life because it was the start of my enjoyment of many other sports throughout my life, and athletics have been important to me for a long time. One day, as I was teaching English at a local, impoverished school not far outside the capital city of Ethiopia, I watched the young boys' football team play at recess. The palpable joy on their faces was something I understood well. As the most popular sport in Ethiopia, most boys passionately took part in the game. I casually asked a teacher who I was sitting with when the girls' team had practice if the boys played at recess. The teacher gave me a strange look and flatly told me that there was no girls’ team, as though I had suggested something ridiculous. As I inquired, horrified, as to why there was no female football program, the teacher told me no one had even thought about it; none of the girls would ever want to play. “Only boys need to run around,” the teacher told me matter-of-factly with his limited English-speaking skills. He then went on to say, in his native language Amharic, that none of the parents would allow their female children to participate. This revelation shocked me more than it should have, being in a more rural setting that still conforms to extremely traditional gender roles. I was immensely dismayed that these girls, who lived relatively close to me, were still restrained by old-fashioned ideas of what girls could do. I wanted to show them that girls could do anything. Being a girl who has enjoyed sports so much throughout her entire life and has been fortunate enough to grow up without the same stigma around participating in sports compelled me to take action. I went to the administrator and insisted that a girls football team must be formed (football was the only sport at the school.) I proposed that it is beneficial for female health to take part in sport, and that if the boys were allowed to do it; the girls should be permitted as well. After that, I no longer spent time teaching English; instead I trained coaches and worked on logistics to ensure that any girl at that school who enjoyed sports even half as much as I did could do so freely. In the future, I wish to continue to pursue this on a much larger scale. I want to provide opportunities for girls who do not have them, whether that is in athletics, education, work, or against anything that continues to perpetuate inequality and unhealthy gender stereotypes for girls. This has continually been a significant issue in Africa, and that is where I would want to start breaking down the gender traditions that are plaguing my country and my continent and failing all of their girls by not giving them an equal chance.