Everything that Althea Gibson accomplished in her lifetime, and the meaning behind her accomplishments, never received the recognition it should have.

	Tennis was only one of the sports Althea Gibson played. She also played in the LPGA, participated in track and field and toured with the Harlem Globetrotters.

In every sport there are trailblazers you look to and say, "If it weren't for this person, I might not be where I am today." Certainly everyone has said that about Arthur Ashe and his accomplishments, but about a decade before Ashe was winning Grand Slam titles, Gibson had already won them -- the first African-American to ever do so.

Unfortunately, when she was winning titles, tennis majors didn't receive the worldwide attention that events get today. As a result, many young tennis players today do not know very much about Gibson, who broke barriers when the sport was still mostly played in country clubs -- not public forums.

I met Gibson only once, at the U.S. Open in the mid-1990s. I was introduced to her while we both watched the same tennis match. At the time, I don't think people around us really knew who she was. They certainly didn't know who I was at the time. But I felt honored to meet a woman who had achieved some things that I dreamed of achieving, but ultimately never did. She achieved things in an era in the United States when it was very difficult for a black person, much less a black woman, to excel in sports -- much less tennis -- and became one of the best of her time.

Every athlete faces various types of pressure to succeed. Not often does an athlete carry the weight of their race in a time when most tennis fans probably wanted to see her fail. I get inspiration today because of what she was able to accomplish.

As a young man, I always heard about and was compared to Arthur Ashe. It wasn't until I got older and more mature that I realized what Althea Gibson meant to the sport and to me. Even though she lived the later years of her life very quietly and out of the public eye, I hope she knew how she influenced the game of tennis and the people who knew her. It's a sad day for tennis fans and sports fans all over the world when a such a legend passes away.

I hope young people who might someday read about Althea Gibson and realize what this young black woman was up against, when blacks weren't accepted in most places in their own country. That if she could succeed and accomplish what she did in America and internationally in her day and age, it's a sin if our young people don't go on to succeed. So many times, young people squander opportunities. Gibson didn't have opportunities to squander; she had to make her own. Today, so many youth are hand-fed opportunities that many won't accept. So if they could somehow, if only for a moment, look at Gibson's life and realize how much opportunity they have today, we would have more successful youth.

MaliVai Washington, a tennis analyst for ESPN, reached the 1996 Wimbledon final.