"This Is about Biology': New Hampshire Girls Soccer Players Boycott Game over Male Opponent https://t.co/30nbu2XWwT
— Paul Epps (@paulepps) October 3, 2024
The team didn’t boycott the game, but several of the players did, which required the coach to fill out the roster with JV players. According to the story, this happens in every game that the Kearsarge Regional High School team plays — multiple girls on the opposing team refuse to play.
I don’t blame them. Aside from being unfair, it’s obviously totally unsafe.
I’ve seen men beating the hell out of women in boxing and MMA. I read about a high school girl suffering brain damage from being hit in the face by a volleyball spiked by a boy. I’ve heard about high school girls getting their teeth knocked out by boys playing on girls’ field hockey teams. I’ve seen a large high school boy playing girls basketball and every time he moved, girls were being knocked to the floor.
Even in sports where men compete against men or boys compete against boys, there are often multiple competitive divisions depending on the age and/or size of the competitors. Boxing and wrestling have weight classes. Junior hockey has age brackets in two-year increments. A team of 14-year-olds can’t compete fairly or safely against a team of 18-year-olds.
There’s actually a law in New Hampshire prohibiting high school boys from playing girls’ sports but the Kearsarge School Board voted this summer to ignore the law. I didn’t even know you could vote to ignore laws.
Refusing to play is one method of protesting male intrusion into women’s sports, but if I were coaching a team of girls competing against Kearsarge, I wouldn’t fill out the roster with JV players, I’d fill out the roster with players from the boys varsity team and tell them, “Just say ‘I identify as female.’ Anything beyond that, you say “Talk to my coach.”
Now let’s play some soccer!