Florida’s state athletic board fined a high school and put it on probation Tuesday after a transgender student played on the girls volleyball team, a violation of a controversial law enacted by Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Legislature.
The Florida High School Athletic Association fined Monarch High $16,500, ordered the principal and athletic director to attend rules seminars and placed the suburban Fort Lauderdale school on probation for 11 months, meaning further violations could lead to increased punishments. The association also barred the girl from participating in boys sports for 11 months.
The 2021 law, which supporters named “The Fairness in Women’s Sports Act,” bars transgender girls and women from playing on public school teams intended for student athletes identified as girls at birth.
The student, a 10th grader who played in 33 matches over the last two seasons, was removed from the team last month after the Broward County School District was notified by an anonymous tipster about her participation. Her removal led hundreds of Monarch students to walk out of class two weeks ago in protest.
When I was in school, there was only girls volleyball and no boy’s volleyball team so I have a question, say the person in this article wasn’t transgender but it was a boy (born with male genitalia and identifying as a male) who wanted to play volleyball. If there were no boy’s volleyball team at the school, would he be allowed to play on the girl’s team? I only ask because isn’t that how Title 9 has been interpreted?
This is anecdotal but I played hockey in high school and wrestled one year, we had a girl on our hockey team because we had no girl’s hockey team, she was a lot better than me too, I also remember one of our wrestlers wrestling a girl from another school because there was no girl’s wrestling team. There were no issues in either of those cases.
Regardless of all that, if there’s only one volleyball team at the school and it’s an all women sport, if a boy or transgender girl wants to play, it seems to me they should be allowed on that team if there’s no other opportunities for them to play.
I’ll finish this by saying: I am one person and these are my thoughts not a strong opinion that I’m going to live or die by so I don’t want to start an argument , just a discussion.
Nope you’re right. We had a girl on our high school hockey team too. High school sports have been put on some kind of pedestal in parts of our country. Like it’s the Olympics or something. It’s literally just supposed to be another avenue of teaching and socialization. Building confidence and the ability to work in teams effectively
Honestly we should go to the other extreme. Stop even keeping score in high school sports.
Edit - At risk of dating myself I do want to point out, this was 20 years ago. Just to show how made up this issue is now.