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ESPN is marking the 40th anniversary of Title IX by unveiling the top 40 female athletes of the past 40 years.

She was a four-time All-American at Central Florida. She scored 105 goals in 153 appearances for the U.S. She earned the Golden Boot as the leading scorer at the 1991 Women's World Cup. She won a gold medal at the 1996 Olympic Summer Games and another World Cup in 1999. She was voted FIFA Woman Player of the Century, alongside China's Sun Wen. And in 2004, she was one of two women on Pele's list of the 125 greatest living players.

But you might not have heard of Michelle Akers, No. 27 in ESPN's countdown.

"She was one of the greatest players ever, but kids now don't necessarily know who she was because there was so much less exposure back then," former U.S. star Julie Foudy says. "The game was really just starting with her."

Read the complete story from espnW here.

Earlier in this series:
No. 40: Diver Fu Mingxia
No. 39: Jockey Julie Krone
No. 38: Gymnast Mary Lou Retton
No. 37: Hockey player Cammi Granato
No. 36: Soccer player Kristine Lilly
No. 35: Basketball player Diana Taurasi
No 34: Volleyball player Flo Hyman
No. 33: Soccer player Abby Wambach
No. 32: Swimmer Mary T. Meagher
No. 31: Marathoner Joan Benoit
No. 30: Sprinter Gail Devers
No. 29: Basketball player Nancy Lieberman
No. 28: Marathoner Grete Waitz

ESPN is marking the 40th anniversary of Title IX by unveiling the top 40 female athletes of the past 40 years.

When Grete Waitz finished her first marathon in world-record time, she vowed it would be her last.

But the Norwegian with the blond pigtails, who is No. 28 in ESPN's countdown, ended up winning the New York City Marathon nine times, including that debut in 1978, and became the first world-class female marathoner.

In addition to her incredible determination, Waitz had a generous spirit that manifested itself in her charity work and in the "Active Against Cancer" foundation she established in her native country following her own diagnosis in 2005. When she died in 2011, at the age of 57, she was mourned in Norway, where she was a national hero, and also in New York.

Read the complete story from espnW here.

Earlier in this series:
No. 40: Diver Fu Mingxia
No. 39: Jockey Julie Krone
No. 38: Gymnast Mary Lou Retton
No. 37: Hockey player Cammi Granato
No. 36: Soccer player Kristine Lilly
No. 35: Basketball player Diana Taurasi
No 34: Volleyball player Flo Hyman
No. 33: Soccer player Abby Wambach
No. 32: Swimmer Mary T. Meagher
No. 31: Marathoner Joan Benoit
No. 30: Sprinter Gail Devers
No. 29: Basketball player Nancy Lieberman

ESPN is marking the 40th anniversary of Title IX by unveiling the top 40 female athletes of the past 40 years.

To the asphalt warriors (all men) on the pickup courts of New York City, the red-haired girl from Far Rockaway, Queens, was just another player. It was there that Nancy Lieberman, No. 29 in ESPN's countdown, honed her electric all-around game and her legend was born.

At 17, she was named to the U.S. women's national team, which took silver a year later at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. She then enrolled at Old Dominion, where she led the Lady Monarchs to two AIAW national championships (1979 and '80) and became the first two-time winner of the Wade Trophy as the country's best player.

"Nancy was the face of the game," says Marianne Stanley, who coached Lieberman at ODU. "She was a relentless competitor, always seeking to improve. You had to chase her out of the gym. You could find her in there at 1 a.m."

Read the complete story from espnW here.

Earlier in this series:
No. 40: Diver Fu Mingxia
No. 39: Jockey Julie Krone
No. 38: Gymnast Mary Lou Retton
No. 37: Hockey player Cammi Granato
No. 36: Soccer player Kristine Lilly
No. 35: Basketball player Diana Taurasi
No 34: Volleyball player Flo Hyman
No. 33: Soccer player Abby Wambach
No. 32: Swimmer Mary T. Meagher
No. 31: Marathoner Joan Benoit
No. 30: Sprinter Gail Devers

Claressa Shields, a 17-year-old boxer from Flint, Mich., and the top-ranked American in her weight class, was upset at the Women's World Boxing Championships in Qinhuangdao, China.

Shields was trying to clinch a berth to the London Olympics with a top-eight finish in the single-elimination tournament. The loss to England's Savannah Marshall was Shields' first loss as an amateur.

According to MLive, Shields' hopes now rest with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Tripartite Commission, which will add a fighter to each weight class after the world championships.

"It would mean everything to me to get a spot so that people could stop calling me an 'Olympic hopeful,' " Shields said prior to the championships. "I know I can do it."

ESPN is marking the 40th anniversary of Title IX by unveiling the top 40 female athletes of the past 40 years

Forget her colorful fingernails. Gail Devers' true signature was breaking the hearts of her fiercest rivals.

Devers, one of the greatest sprinters in Olympic history and No. 30 in ESPN's countdown, certainly had a flair for the dramatic.

At the 1992 Barcelona Games, Devers won gold in the 100 meters by beating Jamaica's Juliet Cuthbert in a photo finish. The next year, at the world championships, she won the 100 after besting Cuthbert's Jamaican compatriot, Merlene Ottey, in another photo finish. And at the 1996 Atlanta Games, Devers did it again, crossing the line in exactly the same time as Ottey, but winning gold thanks to the help of a high-speed camera.

"She's the person who never stops trying," said Greece's Voula Patoulidou, the gold medalist in the 100-meter hurdles in Barcelona.

Read the complete story from espnW here.

Earlier in this series:
No. 40: Diver Fu Mingxia
No. 39: Jockey Julie Krone
No. 38: Gymnast Mary Lou Retton
No. 37: Hockey player Cammi Granato
No. 36: Soccer player Kristine Lilly
No. 35: Basketball player Diana Taurasi
No 34: Volleyball player Flo Hyman
No. 33: Soccer player Abby Wambach
No. 32: Swimmer Mary T. Meagher
No. 31: Marathoner Joan Benoit

ESPN is marking the 40th anniversary of Title IX by unveiling the top 40 female athletes of the past 40 years

The next time you're struggling with a training run, think of Joan Benoit.

In 1984, she won the U.S. Olympic marathon trials a mere 17 days after undergoing arthroscopic knee surgery.

Benoit then went on to capture gold in the inaugural women's Olympic marathon at the Los Angeles Games and introduced elite women's distance running to a global audience. A few hundred meters from the finish line, the typically reserved Benoit took off her cap and waved it to acknowledge the crowd. She finished nearly a minute and a half ahead of the second-place finisher, with a time of 2:24:52, a mark that stood as an Olympic record until 2000.

She is No. 31 in ESPN's countdown.

Read the complete story from espnW here.

Earlier in this series:
No. 40: Diver Fu Mingxia
No. 39: Jockey Julie Krone
No. 38: Gymnast Mary Lou Retton
No. 37: Hockey player Cammi Granato
No. 36: Soccer player Kristine Lilly
No. 35: Basketball player Diana Taurasi
No 34: Volleyball player Flo Hyman
No. 33: Soccer player Abby Wambach
No. 32: Swimmer Mary T. Meagher

Paige Sultzbach, a freshman second baseman at Mesa Preparatory Academy (Ariz.), could have been celebrating a state baseball title today. Instead, she is the center of national attention after Our Lady of Sorrows (Phoenix), chose to forfeit the championship rather than play a girl.

"I don't want our very first high school baseball team to win the championship on a forfeit," she told the Arizona Republic.

Our Lady of Sorrows is a fundamentalist Catholic school that lost twice to Mesa Prep during the regular season.

Read the full story here.

ESPN is marking the 40th anniversary of Title IX by unveiling the top 40 female athletes of the past 40 years.

Mary T. Meagher was only 16 when she pulled off what Sports Illustrated would later recognize as one of the greatest sports performances ever.

It was August of 1981 at the U.S. long course championships when "Madame Butterfly" set a pair of world records that would stand for nearly two decades. In the 100-meter butterfly, Meagher knocked an incredible 1.33 seconds off her old world mark. In the 200 fly, she finished nearly 10 meters in front of her nearest competitor and broke her own record by nearly half a second.

Meagher, who was born the 10th of 11 children into a strict Catholic family in Louisville, Ky., is No. 32 in ESPN's countdown.

Read the complete story from espnW here.

Earlier in this series:
No. 40: Diver Fu Mingxia
No. 39: Jockey Julie Krone
No. 38: Gymnast Mary Lou Retton
No. 37: Hockey player Cammi Granato
No. 36: Soccer player Kristine Lilly
No. 35: Basketball player Diana Taurasi
No 34: Volleyball player Flo Hyman
No. 33: Soccer player Abby Wambach

On June 23, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon signed Title IX into law.

Things have never been the same.

The number of girls playing high school sports jumped from 294,015 in 1971-72 to 3,172,637 in 2009-10, an increase of 1079 percent. The number of women playing varsity sports in college rose from 29,972 in 1971-72 to 186,460 in 2009-10, a 622 percent increase.

Here are nine ways to celebrate that progress as we approach the 40th anniversary of Title IX.

ESPN is marking the 40th anniversary of Title IX by unveiling the top 40 female athletes of the past 40 years.

Even as a 16-year-old, Abby Wambach seemed destined for stardom.

"You could see the qualities we all know today," says April Heinrichs, who coached Wambach on a junior national team before taking over the U.S. senior national team from 2000 to 2005. "She was great in the air, and she was a winner."

Today, the soccer star, who is No. 33 in the ESPN countdown, has scored 134 goals for Team USA, second all-time on the international stage, behind Mia Hamm's 158.

But what really has set Wambach apart over the years is how she elevates her game at crunch time.

"I've never seen her intimidated by anyone," Heinrichs says, "or by any challenge."

Read the complete story from espnW here.

Earlier in this series:
No. 40: Diver Fu Mingxia
No. 39: Jockey Julie Krone
No. 38: Gymnast Mary Lou Retton
No. 37: Hockey player Cammi Granato
No. 36: Soccer player Kristine Lilly
No. 35: Basketball player Diana Taurasi
No 34: Volleyball player Flo Hyman

ESPN is marking the 40th anniversary of Title IX by unveiling the top 40 female athletes of the past 40 years.

Legend has it that Flo Hyman could spike the ball 110 mph. That she hit the ball so hard that it often had funky spin, making it appear to rise for an opponent ready to dig low. That at the same time, she was fiendishly accurate. "She could drill some angles you just couldn't even imagine," longtime U.S. teammate Laurel Iversen recalls.

High school volleyball exploded during Hyman's star turn, and beach volleyball blossomed not long after her tragic death. She is No. 34 in ESPN's countdown.

Read the complete story from espnW here.

Earlier in this series:
No. 40: Diver Fu Mingxia
No. 39: Jockey Julie Krone
No. 38: Gymnast Mary Lou Retton
No. 37: Hockey player Cammi Granato
No. 36: Soccer player Kristine Lilly
No. 35: Basketball player Diana Taurasi

ESPN is marking the 40th anniversary of Title IX by unveiling the top 40 female athletes of the past 40 years.

In college, she helped deliver three national titles to UConn and won back-to-back Naismith Awards; in the WNBA, she has collected two championships and an MVP award with the Phoenix Mercury; and this summer in London, she'll go for her third Olympic gold medal with Team USA.

There's a bit of magic in how Diana Taurasi plays, a sense of the moment, a bravado and unrestrained enthusiasm that has elevated her from top-shelf to one-of-a-kind. Taurasi is the No. 35 player in ESPN's countdown of the top 40 female athletes of the past 40 years.

"People always ask who the best player in the world is," former UConn teammate Sue Bird told SLAM. "Diana is the first person I think of. Her flair for life is infectious, both on and off the court."

Click here to read the complete story from espnW.

Earlier in this series:
No. 40: Diver Fu Mingxia
No. 39: Jockey Julie Krone
No. 38: Gymnast Mary Lou Retton
No. 37: Hockey player Cammi Granato
No. 36: Soccer player Kristine Lilly

ESPN is marking the 40th anniversary of Title IX by unveiling the top 40 female athletes of the past 40 years.

Kristine Lillywas only a teenager when she got called up to the U.S. women's soccer team. By the time she retired when she was 39, she had made a record 352 appearances for the national team, played in five FIFA Women's World Cups, and played in three Olympics, winning gold in 1996 and 2004.

But perhaps more than anything else, it was her work ethic that separated her from her teammates and opponents. Lilly, the No. 36 player in ESPN's countdown, developed that work ethic early in life. She would return home from her time with the national team and embark on lengthy runs through the snow and wind in Wilton, Conn.

"Kristine just wore players out," says Tony DiCicco, coach for the U.S. from 1990-99.

Read the full story from espnW here.

Earlier in this series:
No. 40: Diver Fu Mingxia
No. 39: Jockey Julie Krone
No. 38: Gymnast Mary Lou Retton
No. 37: Hockey player Cammi Granato

ESPN is marking the 40th anniversary of Title IX by unveiling the top 40 female athletes of the past 40 years.

In 1990, just 6,000 girls were registered with USA Hockey. Today, there are more than 62,000.

Much of the credit goes to Cammi Granato, the No. 37 player in ESPN's countdown, who led the underdog United States to a 3-1 win over Canada in the 1998 Winter Olympics in women's ice hockey's debut at the Games. Granato ended up on a Wheaties box, wrote her first book and began broadcasting games for the NHL.

"She was the face of the sport when the game burst onto the international scene," says USA Hockey executive director Dave Ogrean. "There wasn't a lot of women's hockey in this country pre-Cammi. She can take credit for so much."

Read the complete story from espnW here.

Earlier in this series:
No. 40: Diver Fu Mingxia
No. 39: Jockey Julie Krone
No. 38: Gymnast Mary Lou Retton

Plenty of high school athletes face demanding travel schedules, but these girls' soccer players take it to the extreme.

They have traveled through mountains, deserts and multiple feet of snow. They've crossed state lines, broken speed limits and racked up thousands of dollars in gas expenses. But in the end, every one of them says the travel is worth it. Every one of them says they'd do it again.

-- Desire, dad drive Bishop Carroll (Wichita, Kan.) senior Keighton Allen to weekly practice 190 miles away. Click here to read more.

-- Players cross state lines just to play with Birmingham United. Click here to read more.

-- Meg O’Brien, a junior at Northland Prep (Flagstaff, Ariz.), journeys through desert, mountain and valley for her club team. Click here to read more.

-- Laura Rayfield and Laura Moore attend rival high schools in Washington, but sing away when they carpool to club pracitces. Click here to read more.