— Paul Epps (@paulepps) May 13, 2026
A high school student named AB Hernandez won all three jumping events — high jump, long jump, triple jump — in the girls’ division at the CIF Southern Section track meet this weekend.
None of the events was close. For example, Hernandez won the girls’ high jump with a mark of 5’8″, quite a bit better than the second place mark of 5’4″.
Meanwhile, over in the boys division, the winner cleared 6’10”. Now if you’re a boy and you want to win the CIF Southern Section but you can only clear 5’8″, you’ve got a couple of options. You can train a lot harder or you can compete against girls.
The fact that the second option is available is a source of wonder to me, and I don’t mean that in a good way, because it would seem to appeal only to people who really hate girls.
The CIF Southern Section covers a vast area of Southern California, so to win an event, you’ve got to put in a lot of work and beat a lot of other competitors. It bothers me that biology is thrown out the window, but it bothers me more to think of girls putting in the work to be better than every other girl in Southern California and then being forced to lose to a boy of no athletic distinction at all.
I think it would take the joy out of training and competing to know in advance that you can’t win no matter how hard you try.