Before Title IX, there was hardly such a thing as inter-school team sports for girls, except maybe field hockey, nor were there many women who spoke like Sarah Palin. Girls could do graceful individual sports like tennis, gymnastics, riding, swimming, fencing. And they had sports for girls, like synchronized swimming and baton-twirling. Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Lynne Cheney were both champion baton-twirlers! But storming the length of a basketball court — and even getting knocked to the floor — with a bunch of tough gals wearing shorts, in public, would have been unladylike.

Basketball may as well have been roller derby, it was so unfeminine. And if unfeminine, then lesbian! My high school taught us half-court basketball.

I cringe to think about it. Women who play only half-court basketball don’t give speeches that draw blood.

If inhibition was the rule in sports, it was the law for opinions. “Don’t talk!” mothers told their little girls. “Let the men do the talking!”

Samuel Johnson said: “A woman’s preaching is like a dog walking on his hind legs — it is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.” Still intimidated and inhibited, many older women speak in a timid sing-song, asking permission. Or they shout to get attention, and they sound harsh or shrill. Palin shows that a woman can speak out with a wicked smile and saucy delight.

Palin cheerfully aimed to whack Obama to bits. Obama has published two autobiographies, but no substantial legislation! With her confident and good-humored delivery of killer lines, she helped John McCain pull even with Obama — for a while — in the polls, and she draws Obama-sized crowds wherever she and McCain appear. The sorority sisters on the editorial pages may swipe at her religious faith, sneer at her pregnant daughter, and cavil at her elbows-out, shirt-tugging, executive style, but by George, that girl can speak!

Palin the speaker is authoritative, down-to-earth, humorous, go-get-’em. Neither a trial lawyer spinning an emotional narrative nor a debater arguing three good points, she spoke to the Republican Convention like the Warrior Queen Elizabeth I sending her troops out against the Spanish Armada. That’s how she spoke when she ran for office in Alaska, too, promising to look out for Alaska’s citizens like a mother bear, “like Nanook.” Palin spoke to the convention, in fact, like the captain of an inter-school basketball team exhorting her players in a sweaty locker room — which she was. Go, team!

The women like Palin who have benefited from competitive inter-school team sports because of Title IX are in their 40s now, or younger. They are running for public office and starting businesses, women who simply assume they can be leaders. Palin told ABC’s Charles Gibson, “I’m a product of Title IX, where we had equality … with sports and education, all my life.” Palin didn’t wait for McCain to offer her the nomination, she told interviewers long before that, Yes! she really wanted that vice-presidential job! And because of Title IX, Palin can get knocked down, pick herself up, and laugh at herself on Saturday Night Live.

For Palin the key to her breakthrough nomination was breakthrough speaking skills. The secret to Palin’s speaking success was breakthrough basketball. She shoots, she scores!

Mary Campbell Gallagher, a lawyer, is a professional speaker and the owner of a bar-exam preparation business called BarWrite. Her work has appeared in Newsday, New York Metro, The New York Observer, The Weekly Standard, The Nation and Legal Times.