Were there any woman sportswriters in 1925? I have no idea, but if there were, I'm sure they got the same cold shoulder Renee Zellweger's character Lexie Littleton got when she showed up in the press box to cover war hero/college star Carter "Bullet" Rutherford's debut as a pro with the Duluth Bulldogs in the movie "Leatherheads."

I know I did when I became part of a small group of women reporters breaching previously men-only sports beats some 50 years later.

In 1971, I was refused entry to the Pitt Stadium press box when, as the newly appointed news editor of the Pitt News, I tried to visit during the annual spring intrasquad game. Since I wasn't covering the game and I hate confrontation, I didn't push it.

By 1975, when my bureau manager at United Press International talked me -- then a general assignment reporter -- into trying my hand at covering the Steelers' home games, the feminist movement had made big-time sports more accessible to women.

The Steelers' PR man, Joe Gordon, complained the first time my boss called to get me credentials ("What the hell are you trying to do to me?" he reportedly asked), but the appropriate press box passes were issued, and he never treated me with anything but courtesy and respect.

The locker room was off-limits as that Steelers team continued its drive for a second consecutive Super Bowl championship, but that was fine with me as long as I had some kind of access to players for post-game interviews. Mr. Gordon arranged for me to stand just outside the locker-room doorway and warned me when someone I might want to talk to was on his way out. The system worked fine most of the time -- except the day quarterback Terry Bradshaw took my notebook, autographed a sheet of it, and handed it back to me.

In "Leatherheads," the players all were charmed by Lexie, the beautiful spitfire who had been sent by her editor to prove that Carter, played by John Krasinski, was not the World War I hero he had been built up to be. He and the team's aging star and leader, Dodge Connolly (George Clooney), each fell in love with her.

No one on that 1975 Steelers team fell in love with me, a married woman -- nor, for that matter, did any other athlete I covered during a subsequent sportswriting career that has spanned four decades. But the players accorded me respect once I showed I knew the difference between a forward pass and a lateral. And sometimes my gender prompted the players to reveal their softer sides during feature interviews on non-football-related subjects. One such story, for example, was about Lynn Swann's ballet lessons.

Coach Chuck Noll was a wonderful teacher on the finer points of the game, but he often asked me questions about journalism. The team's owner and patriarch, Art Rooney Sr., regaled me with stories about horse racing, a sport we both loved.

Some members of the press box were much tougher to win over than any member of the Steelers' organization. One, who shall remain nameless, was offensively paternalistic, another crudely sexist. The late sportscaster Myron Cope, a wonderful writer whom I greatly admired, thought women had no place in the press box and said so frequently.

I knew I had arrived the day Mr. Cope turned to me as we awaited Mr. Noll's arrival for his weekly news briefing and said, "Well, at least you know how to write."