Listening to Martha Altmire accept her Butler Area Sports Hall of Fame induction last weekend was a bit of an awakening for me.

She was a female accepting induction into the Butler Hall. There hasn't been much of that in recent years.

Altmire became only the fifth woman to enter the Hall since 1997. Of the 318 inductees, fewer than 20 are women.

The Butler Area Sports Hall of Fame existed for 13 years before inducting its first woman — national judo champion Jordie Ritz — in 1979.

During her acceptance speech, Altmire unknowingly explained why there is a scarcity of females in the Hall.

Altmire, who attended Moniteau High School during the 1960s, said the school had no varsity athletic program for girls then. Very few schools did.

Even when Altmire was coaching high school girls basketball, she was learning the game on the fly.

Obviously, things have changed.

Eventually, the number of women in the Butler Area Sports Hall of Fame will change as well.

It's inevitable.

Just look at Butler High over the past few years. Annessa Schnur, Amy Achesinski, Meghan Schnur, Annie Lowry, Molly Evans and Kim Nowakowski are likely to be enshrined in the Butler Area Sports Hall of Fame down the road.

Schnur was a versatile track athlete who went on to the University of Michigan. Achesinski scored 1,500 points in basketball. Schnur and Lowry were soccer standouts in high school and at Division I colleges, and Schnur has since turned professional.

Evans is breaking swimming records as an underclassman at Carnegie Mellon and Nowakowski was a 1,000-point scorer in high school and a standout at California (Pa.) University.

All of them have Hall of Fame credentials.

Look beyond Butler, stay within the county and there are plenty of other candidates.

Jence Rhoads scored more than 2,000 points at Slippery Rock and is the starting point guard at Vanderbilt. Alyssa Deal was a multisport athlete at Moniteau and owns the basketball scoring record there.

Leslie Barnhart broke the state goal-scoring record in soccer at Karns City.

Seneca Valley's Amanda Smith won championships as a high school swimmer and went on to swim for North Carolina. Fellow Raider graduate Aly Intihar has been lighting it up on the softball field at Cornell.

Mallory Bugel was a soccer star at Mars and Westminster College. And recent Mars graduate and stellar softball pitcher Monica Glomb already has made a major impact on the Kutztown University program.

Freeport graduate Lacey Cochran is all over the track and field record book at Slippery Rock University and has done well at the national level.

Knoch graduate Amanda Sharbaugh scored 100 goals in high school and led Gannon University soccer in scoring as a freshman.

These are just a few names of Butler County female athletes making an impact.

Take heart, Jordie. Company is on the way.

John Enrietto is sports editor of the Butler Eagle.