One of the well-established traditions of high school is the quarterback also being crowned as royalty on the homecoming court. But when it’s the homecoming queen title that the quarterback earns, the occasion is historic.

So it was for the Erin DiMeglio, Florida’s history-making student-athlete. Not only did Erin become the first female in the state’s history to play quarterback in a varsity high school game, but she also was elected South Plantation High School’s homecoming queen.

As I pondered Erin’s amazing autumn, and reflected on my own athletic youth, it occurred to me that the real history lesson in her football season wasn’t that a girl was playing high school football — just that she was playing the sport’s most elite position.

That’s because over the past 17 Florida high school football seasons, 523 varsity roster spots have been filled by girls, an average of more than 30 per year. And none of them would have been given the chance if not for Title IX, the landmark legislation assuring female student-athletes the same opportunities as boys at both the high school and college levels.

Title IX is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year.

When I was in high school, I was a pretty good athlete, but there were no scholarship opportunities for me in the sports in which I excelled — volleyball and track. We had the Girls Athletic Association, essentially intramurals, but not interscholastic competition. But now, as part of the leadership team of Florida’s official sanctioning body for high school athletics, I see first-hand how much the landscape has improved for female student-athletes in our state.

In 1973, the first year after Title IX became law, fewer than 10,500 girls participated in Florida high school athletics, and they were confined to six sports: swimming and diving, girls basketball, track and field, tennis, gymnastics and golf. They represented fewer than 17 percent of all high school student-athletes.

Last school year, almost 110,000 high school girls participated in sports. The participation has grown well beyond the original six sports to include mainstays like soccer and volleyball but also lacrosse, water polo and even weightlifting and wrestling. In the past decade, 102 girls have played high school baseball, on boys’ teams.

And, of course, there’s football, where 36 girls competed on their high school football teams last school year. Those who missed out on the benefits of Title IX can take comfort in knowing what the federal legislation made possible for those who followed: a world in which girls and boys get to compete on a level playing field and sometimes, as in the case of Erin DiMeglio, it’s literally on the same field.

Peggy Jones, associate executive director, Florida High School

Athletic Association, Gainesville