I was 9 years old when I watched Hayden Panettiere star as Channing Walsh in 2005's Racing Stripes—a sweet, if not forgettable film about a zebra with horse-racing ambitions—then as Gen Harwood in Ice Princess shortly after. A year later, I followed along as she stunted and danced alongside Solange Knowles in Bring It On: All or Nothing, an eventual cult classic that transformed sleepovers everywhere for the better. Then, in 2012, I finally sat down to watch 2000's Remember the Titans (I know, I know—sacrilege for a sports journalist), in which a spunky Panettiere plays the ball-loving, fast-talking Sheryl Yoast, a 9.5-year-old pipsqueak who refuses to abandon her love of the gridiron for more ... feminine pursuits, let’s say.
To me—and I can only assume millions of Millennial women who grew up on Disney Channel Original Movies and Meg Cabot adaptations—Panettiere was the preteen version of Tom Cruise. The movie star of all movie stars. The girl who just wouldn't quit. Sure, she wasn’t jumping out of planes or traversing down mountains, but in my 10-year-old mind, she did pretty much everything else. She could ice skate. She could cheer. She could call football plays with the military precision of Coach Herman Boone. And she looked totally cool while doing it.
