AUSTIN — At 5 feet 2, Krissica “Spoon” Harper was a speck in blue at the Erwin Center free-throw line. A raucous throng quieted.

“Hit it like a state champion,” rang a voice from the crowd.

Swish.

Moments later, it was no pretense. Harper and her Midway teammates were 4A state champions. With the 3A state title claimed by Robinson’s girls that morning, the Pantherettes had completed a University Interscholastic League twofer that will have Greater Waco talking for years.

I’m a high school basketball junkie, loving the excitement and unpredictability of the game. I’m a big fan of girls’ basketball and women’s hoops at the college level and even the pros.

Part of the reason is that I came from a place and time where girls’ sports were less than an afterthought. At my high school in Colorado in the early ’70s, girls did track or gymnastics. Period.

No softball, no volleyball, no basketball. No self-actualization in so many opportunities afforded boys.

Texas was a trailblazer in giving girls these opportunities. Good for Texas.

Those accustomed to seeing women and girls soar in such situations likely don’t even know of the epic struggle to bring equity of the sexes in such venues. The battle over Title IX in college sports was at times bitter and brutal, often accompanied by crocodile tears from the men for whom athletic palaces were built.

I’ve written in this space that we put too much emphasis on scholastic sports relative to other endeavors. But as with the whole of extracurricular activities, you can’t overstate their importance in helping young people define themselves and march confidently into the outside world.

So, what a thrill to see these young ladies step in the brightest lights and not blink.

As the incredible Midway team now shifts into lore, I have my own Pantherettes story. Hearing they were mighty good two years ago, I went with my wife to see them play. “Mighty good” was an understatement.

Right out of the chute, a skinny freshman guard pumped in three three-pointers against a pretty good Copperas Cove team.

The Pantherettes were big, fast, deep. I kept thinking, “Surely Coach Kim has scouted this bunch.” After the game, I asked one parent if Kim Mulkey ever made these games. Well, she’d made just about every one, in fact. Her daughter Makenzie, today an increasingly rangy and sinewy junior, was that deadeye freshman.

Saturday, part of the intrigue was whether the Baylor coach — herself a trailblazer in scholastic sports — would see her daughter win a state title and make it to Waco for the tip-off that evening with Texas A&M. Yes and yes.

The only crime was that the 3A and 4A games were in different sessions, so Greater Waco couldn’t raise the roof in unison.

Seeing these girls bathed in the flash of news cameras at center court, the tendency was to say, “This is their moment.”

But maybe they’ll have many more moments. Once you get comfortable in the limelight, any number of endeavors seem less daunting. So I celebrate with them an opportunity some of their forbears never saw and say, “Good for us.”

John Young’s column appears Thursday, Sunday and occasionally Tuesday. E-mail: jyoung@wacotrib.com.