Disaster 2 transgender girls win CT state track competition - other high school girls look disappointed af in the video

For the second straight year, a small group of transgender athletes dominated their respective events at the girls track and field state championships in Connecticut. Apparently, the second time through the ringer for some fellow competitors was too much, with parents of those athletes now stepping forward to try to ban those transgender athletes from competing as females.

As reported by the Hartford Courant, the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference allows athletes to compete as members of the gender with which they identify. That means that transgender teenagers can compete alongside cisgender opponents, creating what some feel is an uneven playing field.


Supporters of two petitions to eliminate the transgender regulations claim that their efforts aren’t aimed at the individual athletes who will be most directly impacted by the regulations. Still, it’s impossible to overlook the success of Andraya Yearwood, who first spoke about her transition to being a transgender female with the Courant a year ago. In the time since then, Yearwood has captured back-to-back 100-meter State Open titles as a freshman and sophomore. After Yearwood broke out as a freshman she inspired multiple other transgender entrants, according to the Courant.

While parents of opposing runners may deny their petitions have anything to do with the chosen gender identity of the teens in question, it’s hard to debate the impact such rules and regulations could have on transgender athletes themselves.

“A transgender girl is a girl and ought to be treated like a girl,” Erin Buzuvis, the law professor who is the director of the Center of Gender and Sexuality Studies at Western New England College, told the Courant. “If you start to put limitations or exclusions on their participation, not only do you run the risk of violating state anti-discrimination law but also you are disregarding and disrespecting a population of students based on a core aspect of their identity, which is something that schools should not be in the practice of doing.

“I understand that it appears to many people as an inequitable playing field, but they don’t have any context or knowledge about how that athlete’s life would be if she weren’t transgender. And it would be possible she’d be beating their daughters if she was cisgender (someone who identifies with their birth sex).”

There’s much more detailed debate about the issue which plays out at the Courant, but perhaps the most clear-minded responses to Yearwood were provided by her fellow athletes on both sides of the ideological divide.

“To be honest, I think it’s great they get a chance to compete and as long as they’re happy, I guess there’s not that much I can do,” RHAM sprinter Bridget Lalonde, who finished third in the 100 behind Yearwood, told the Courant. “The rules are the rules. The only competition is the clock because you can only run as fast as you can run.”

“I think it’s unfair to the girls who work really hard to do well and qualify for Opens and New Englands,” Glastonbury sophomore sprinter Selina Soule, who finished sixth in the 100-meter State Open final behind Yearwood, told the Courant. “These girls, they’re just coming in and beating everyone. I have no problem with them wanting to be a girl.”

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On Monday, when Connecticut had its State Open track and field championships at Willow Brook Park, one person broke the State Open records for girls in both the 100 and 200-meter runs.

That person was a biological boy.

Terry Miller of Bulkeley, a transgender, won the events. In the 100 meter dash, the runner-up was Andraya Yearwood of Cromwell, also a transgender.

Yearwood won the Class M sprint titles last year; Miller competed on the boys’ teamduring the winter indoor season then joined the girls’ competition.

Asked about the two girls who worked for years who got knocked out of the finals by Miller and Yearwood and the two girls who finished seventh and eighth in the finals who were denied a chance to compete in the New England championships, CIAC executive director Karissa Niehoff said, “We do feel for them. Fully agree it doesn’t feel good. The optic isn’t good. But we really do have to look at the bigger issues that speak to civil rights and the fact this is high school sports.”

Hillhouse coach Gary Moore told Hearst Connecticut Media that Miller should be able to compete, but the situation “wasn’t fair to the girls,” adding, something should be done to “level the playing field.” He stated, “I’ve been stopped by at least five coaches, all of them saying they really liked what I said in the paper. How come other coaches aren’t talking? This is a big issue a lot of coaches have, that we’ve got to do something, but how come you’re not saying anything? I’ve said what I needed to say. I’m getting a little annoyed with the coaches that we haven’t been able to get together and do what’s best for everybody.”

Selina Soule of Glastonbury High, who finished sixth in the 100 and has studied the literature about Title IX and competitive sports, said of the rule allowing transgender athletes to compete against persons of the opposite biological sex, “Of course, it should be that way for math and science and chorus. Sports are set up for fairness. Biologically male and female are different. The great majority is being sacrificed for the minority.”

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