JULIE FLEETING: FOOTBALLER

Every chance she got, Julie was out of doors playing footie in the streets near her home in Kilwinning with her pals.

"I felt like one of the boys. They didn't treat me differently," she says. "I could hold my own."

Today Julie is a phenomenon in a male-dominated sport.

The 26-year-old Ayrshire PE teacher is widely recognised as Scotland's best female footballer.

As captain of the Scottish women's team and striker with Arsenal Ladies in the Women's English Premier League, she has proved her ability time and again.

Julie won the 2005 Players' Player of the Year gong after hitting 21 goals with Arsenal.

However, 2007 was Julie's year. She won her 100th cap in October, just days after notching her 100th goal for Scotland against Slovakia.

"Even though I didn't score myself, winning the European Cup with Arsenal last year was the highlight of my club career," she says.

It's in the blood. Julie's father Jim was a defender with Kilmarnock and is now the SFA's director of football development.

"Initially, he wasn't keen on me playing," she says.

"He wasn't a pushy parent, but he tried to push me into different sports. He was keen that I didn't focus on just one thing."

Julie always thought that for her football could only be a hobby but she turned out as a professional with San Diego Spirit in the US for two years from 2001, returning to Scotland when the league folded.

She says: "It was difficult being away from home but playing football in scorching weather and getting paid for it was great."

It's a hectic life. Julie is at the gym each morning before work and trains most nights.

Her husband is Livingston goalkeeper Colin Stewart and on Sundays, they travel to England so she can play.

And then there's the day job - Julie teaches PE at St Matthew's Academy in Kilwinning.

Amazingly she won her first cap when she was just 15 - "I'll never forget it" - and she and her team-mates are role models for today's young women footballers.

She says: "When I started I didn't know of any female players. I simply played because I enjoyed it."

Her hopes for the coming year? "I would love to play in a major championship in the Scotland team," she says.

GINA BECK: GYM COACH

"I thought it was so elegant. It's a challenge to make your body do these things. But there wasn't the money to send me to classes," says Gina ruefully.

It wasn't until adulthood that she finally realised her ambition after she sent her own daughter, Angela, to the local gymnastics club at Drumchapel Sports Centre.

Gina, now 39, turned out to be a natural at the sport.

Eventually, she trained to be a coach and now runs the gymnastics club, which each week attracts up to 90 young people, aged five to 26, from all over Glasgow and beyond.

The club not only teaches club members gymnastics, it also gives them discipline and self-respect, says Gina.

She adds: "Sometimes I see teenagers hanging about and they'll run away when the police come.

"I look at teenagers of the same age and the same backgrounds who come to the club and they've taken a different path because they've been encouraged.

"We've had youngsters come to us with a couldn't-care-less attitude. They can so easily get drawn into crime and drugs.

"Two or three months down the line, you see their attitude change. They start to trust people. It gives them a bit of self-worth.

"Not one of the kids who come to the club has got into any trouble."

The club puts on a winter festival, Christmas shows and regular displays and these all bring in recruits.

Fundraising is a big part of the job and Gina and her committee work hard to raise money to take pupils to festivals in this country and abroad.

In 1999 Angela represented Great Britain at the World Ministrada Gymnastics in Sweden.

Gina takes five gymnastic classes a week and also voluntary course cheerleading classes.

She said: "Some of the youngsters have never been outside Glasgow before, but we've been to Italy twice to perform and hope to go to Gran Canaria this year."

Gina is also coaching the Scottish cheerleaders who will compete in the junior and senior world championships in Florida this year.

Her sons Jamie, 22, and John, 11, are also keen on gymnastics and cheerleading but Gina genuinely cares about all the kids.

She says: "If I stopped doing this, I'd be letting them down."

AILEEN McGLYNN: CYCLIST

"Oh, oh, I don't know if I like this," Aileen McGlynn was thinking to herself in a panic.

A star of Paralympic cycling events, who has been piling up gold medals over the last few years, Aileen chuckles at the memory of that first hair-raising ride on a tandem.

"It was like being on a rollercoaster, going round the corners. You're not in control of the steering and rely on someone else to get you round safely.

"There are six gears, no brakes and you've got to back pedal to slow down."

But the girl who borrowed a neighbour's bike to ride on the road when she was seven because her parents wouldn't allow it has never been short of guts.

These days, Aileen is a veteran of going round the track at up to 40mph.

"I don't get that horrible feeling now," she laughs. "My female pilot, Ellen Hunter, from Cornwall, loves going downhill fast and the thrill of doing that is great because I couldn't do it on my own."

Aileen, 34, was made an MBE in 2005 for her services to cycling for the disabled.

It's an amazing achievement for the Crookston girl who was born with the genetic conditions, nystagmus, which affects the sight, and photophobia, which means she has no pigmentation in her skin.

As a child, she had to endure cruel teasing because she looked different. It can still happen. "Sometimes, you can walk past a bunch of guys and get called names. But there is no point in dwelling on it and you have to make the best of what you have," she says firmly.

Aileen is a determined character who values her independence and still cycles in the street. "I know my own area and I use magnifiers and a telescope to see bus numbers," she says.

She trained to be an actuary but decided to go professional as a cyclist two years ago. She says: "I just went for it. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."

She has particularly happy memories of the Athens Paralympics in 2004 where she and Ellen won gold and silver.

"My mum, two sisters and baby niece were all there to see me win."

Last year, Aileen and Ellen won at the Australian Championships in January. In spring they took two golds in the World Championships in Bordeaux in France. They also claimed gold at the World Cup in Manchester and won at the Pan-American paracycling championships in November in Colombia.

The latter was a bitter-sweet success for Aileen victory as she was still reeling from the shock of her father's death.

She is now looking forward to the Paralympic World Championships in Manchester in May and the Paralympics in Beijing later in the year.

"Maybe we'll make London after that," she says.