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GREENSBORO — Caroline Lind remembers dreaming of competing in the Olympics as she swam in the public pools of Greensboro all those years ago. Today, she’ll come home with a gold medal.

She remembers competing as a young girl in sports that might have been out of her reach only a generation before her. Today, she’ll come home a shining example for little girls everywhere that nothing is out of reach.

Lind will be in Greensboro today as the guest speaker for the Kay Yow Outstanding Female in Sports Award banquet, where a Guilford County athlete will be honored by YWCA Greensboro. All young female athletes will be celebrated.

On her way to the ceremony, which will be held at the N.C. A&T Alumni Foundation Event Center, she’ll pass by swimming pools and softball fields and tennis and basketball courts that will be filled with girls this summer. She’ll go past facilities for martial arts and golf courses and soccer fields and fitness centers where young girls practice fencing and tumbling and archery and rock climbing. She’ll go past running tracks and bowling alleys and skating centers where kids begin to compete as soon as they can walk.

And she’ll remember something her mom told her years ago.

“You could swim before you could walk,” Lind remembers her mom saying. “We just threw you in.”

Lind won a gold medal last summer in the women’s eight rowing competition in Beijing, the first such American victory since 1984. Those closest to the team said it was all about training, about preparation and a testament to the power of American rowing. Lind said it went back to that pool all those years ago.

“That’s where I learned to compete,” she said. “I don’t think I would ever be as competitive as I am today had I not swam all those years ago in 8-and-unders. That’s where I learned what competition is all about.”

She said the opportunities for young girls today are limitless, and she tells them that all the time.

“Women and sports is something I’m very passionate about,” she said. “It’s a great time to be a young female athlete. There are so many opportunities for young girls these days, in all sports. All the club teams, the community-league teams ... And people don’t have that prejudice that little girls can’t compete anymore.

“Anything’s possible, but you have to have support, someone who believes in you. To find a community or find people to get advice from, people to lean on when you need to, that’s what makes the difference. But the opportunity is there to do anything you want.”

Tonight’s award, in the name of the late N.C. State women’s basketball coach from Gibsonville, will be presented by Stephanie Glance, the longtime assistant to Yow. It will go to a Guilford County female who has made significant contributions for women and sports “in the tradition of Coach Kay Yow.”

YWCA Greensboro also will present three athletics awards for students, a community leader award and a coach/teacher award.

There were no such ceremonies for young girls when Lind was growing up. And she knows now the generations before her weren’t even allowed to compete on anything resembling a level field of opportunity. She credits her family and her coaches through the years, but understands that those who played before her were pioneers without even realizing it.

Lind is at Princeton now, studying alongside another Greensboro gold medalist, skater Joey Cheek, and she believes there’s more than irony behind that. This community of parents and students and coaches and teachers molded her and Cheek and gave them the direction and the opportunity to compete on a national stage and, eventually, against the entire world.

“I’m proud to be able to bring a gold medal back to Greensboro,” she said. “It says we can do it, anybody can do it. When the people see the medal, hold it in their hands and feel it, it becomes real for them. I’m from Greensboro, and part of what I do is represent Greensboro.”

She’ll come home today a representative of what Greensboro can do, what little girls can do, and what can happen when a little girl from Greensboro dreams big.

Contact Ed Hardin at 373-7069 or ed.hardin@news-record.com