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When people ask me about the many changes that have come to Albuquerque during my lifetime, I never have to think hard about the most astonishing.

It's . . . girls.

OK, girls playing sports.

They are everywhere now, have been everywhere for awhile, and surely by now you've noticed.

They're in every high school gym.

At every city park.

On every running trail.

Under every bench press.

Name the age - 6, 16, 36, 66 - and they are out there, competing in ways that most wouldn't have imagined, and probably not acknowledged, 20 or 30 years ago.

A lot of people can claim the credit for this. Fine. But I will tell you who deserves it most.

Her name is Linda Estes.

Estes, the former Associate Athletics Director at the University of New Mexico, promoted women's athletics long before they were cool. Or even accepted. Or even tolerated.

Each time coach Don Flanagan's Lobos play to a big crowd at The Pit, or the girls state basketball tournament draws 15,000 for a championship game, or a cheering father watches his pigtailed 8-year-old kick a ball at a soccer game, repeat these words: Linda Estes.

When it comes to giving girls opportunities that today's generation regard as natural as breathing, Estes is this state's Rosa Parks.

At no small personal cost, she tirelessly battled to make Title IX a reality, not just a joke, in New Mexico. And she did it from a very big stage. Advocating for women's athletics at the state's biggest university made Estes a very large target for those of us who simply didn't get it.

"When I go to women's basketball games now, or even men's games, people come up and hug me - tell me what a visionary I was," Estes says with a semi-chuckle. "A lot of them are the same people who tried to get me fired."

They never succeeded: Estes worked more than 30 years at UNM, outlasting, outpoliticking or outfoxing rivals and critics who couldn't abide her sharp tongue, starchy activism - and sometimes, her success.

And it is a success. Just look outside the living room window.

With Title IX, the 1972 law that eliminated discrimination on the basis of sex, as her hammer, Estes built a solid, respectable women's athletics program at UNM.

Thanks to that push, tumblers began to fall. In Albuquerque, the presence of UNM women's athletics helped encourage Albuquerque high schools to create or improve their own girls' teams, which then prompted the discovery of better coaches, who then attracted and trained more girls, who then found ways to get better and better and better.

More important, however, was the acceptance girls' athletics gained over the years - from fans, administrators, media, and yes, from the girls themselves.

Maybe this would've happened anyway. But I doubt it could've been accomplished as quickly - or as strikingly - without someone to put squeak in the wheel.

Estes, who retired from UNM in 2000 and now lives on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, takes great pride in what she's done. She's never been afraid to talk about her feelings - or the fight.

But, no, she didn't plan it like this, at least not in the 1960s when she was in high school and the caste was set: boys did the competing; girls did the sitting.

"The thing is that I was disappointed in myself," Estes says. "In high school, I wished I had a team to play on. I never thought of it as civil rights, that we had as much right as boys did to play on a team. That didn't occur to me. It was just that they had privileges I wish I had."

A few years later, Estes says, she was transformed by the civil rights movement, the women's movement. And the rest was history.

Or better yet, reality.

Either way, Estes' stature has finally reached that point of acceptance - a place where a new generation can barely believe there was a time when girls couldn't compete. Couldn't sweat.

In recognition of that transformation, perhaps, Estes will be inducted in March by the Albuquerque/New Mexico Sports Hall of Fame. She joins a class, trailblazers all, that includes golfer Nancy Lopez, former track and field standout Susan Vigil MacEachen and former Albuquerque Public Schools Athletics Director Buddy Robertson.

Oddly, Estes says there's not necessarily one event of which she's most proud, no singular Rosa Parks moment. But maybe her story is like that of a kid who runs a long, long race. It's not one step that matters most. It's the fact that you finish.

"For myself," she says, "I'm proud that I didn't give up. The more people pushed, the harder I pushed back."