The first thing a female athlete learns in the world of sports is that she can’t play with the boys.

She can’t run as fast, jump as high or hit as hard as a boy. It’s softball. Not baseball. In golf she plays from the ladies tee, not the normal tee. She can be a dancer or a gymnast, but there’s no way she can play a contact sport as rough as football.

If she makes it as a professional athlete, she might make half of what a male competing in her sport is paid. Maybe. But she definitely won’t have the fan base or television viewership.

From elementary school on, female athletes are conditioned to believe that they are inferior.

This year, female athletes truly are in a league of their own. Only this time, it’s a little different.

At the 2012 London Olympics, the U.S. women alone won 58 medals. How many did men win?

If the U.S. women’s team had competed on their own as a separate country, they would have finished fourth overall, and tied for third in the gold medal count.

Missy Franklin took home four gold medals- the same number as Michael Phelps.

Aside from the U.S., 16-year-old Chinese swimmer Ye Shiwen set a world record in the women’s 400 meter individual medley. In the last 50 meters, she even swam faster than U.S. superstar Ryan Lochte. But she’s female, so she must be doping.

Growing up as a female athlete, I’ve been conditioned in the same way as every other girl who is active in sports. We grow up accepting the fact that, physically, we cannot compete with boys.

It’s not even something that is explained to us. It doesn’t have to be. It is ingrained in us to our core because the rest of the world tells us it’s true.

And maybe it is. If you put Shiwen and Lochte in the pool racing against one another, she’s probably not going to beat him straight up.

But she still did something amazing. So why, when a woman accomplishes an incredible feat, do we immediately say it’s impossible?

Why do female athletes receive less pay, less coverage and less interest when they are putting in just as much work as their male counterparts?

The world of sports runs off of adrenaline, talent, ambition and the desire to win no matter the odds. It’s about blood and sweat and incredible perseverance. That is what it takes to win a gold medal. That is what every fan wants so desperately to see.

Dear America: the U.S. women won 58 gold medals at the 2012 Olympics. Can we please have some recognition now?