Into the books
Girls cheated out of their own sport again:
The KIPP Academy girls basketball game on February 8 against the Collegiate Charter School of Lowell ended at halftime. The question is, why? Collegiate Charter left after 16 minutes of play with KIPP leading, 31-14. The game goes into the books as a 10-0 forfeit win for KIPP.
According to multiple sources, KIPP has a male player on its girls basketball roster, despite the school offering a boys program. The player is reported to be more than 6 feet tall with facial hair. KIPP officials refused to confirm the player’s gender identification.
The facial hair bit seems irrelevant at first, but then you realize it’s a pretty good reason to think the player is not a girl.
If the player identifies as female, participation on the girls team would seem to be supported by the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association, the governing body for high school athletics in the Commonwealth. According to the MIAA Handbook, Section 43.3.1: “A student shall not be excluded from participation on a gender-specific sports team that is consistent with the student’s bona fide gender identity.”
Oh please. Who decides whether the faith is good or not? And why does good faith excuse all anyway? Even if the student in some sense believes he has a female idenniny, he’s still a boy playing against girls.
The MIAA does make it clear, however, that this rule is not to be enacted for the purpose of gaining a competitive advantage, as noted in the MIAA Handbook, Section 43.3.2:
“When a school district submits a roster to the MIAA, it is verifying that it has determined that the students listed on a gender-specific sports team are eligible to participate either based on the gender listed on their official birth certificate or based on their bona fide gender identity and that no students are included on the roster solely for the purpose of gaining an unfair advantage in competitive athletics.
Oh well that’s fine then, because of course they’re going to say up front that this male student is included on the roster solely for the purpose of gaining an unfair advantage in competitive athletics.
Collegiate Charter left not because they were losing but because they didn’t want any more injuries.
[Athletic Director] Pelczar said [Coach] Ortins had his own reasons for leaving.
“So, he felt that his girls were getting injured, basically, all game,” Pelczar said. “He has a playoff game on Monday, so he didn’t want to have any more of his girls go down.”
Ah, I see. It wasn’t a problem that they were losing because the other team had a large boy playing, it was a problem only because the girls were being injured and they have a playoff game next week.
That all seems very fair and reasonable.
Well, I understand sort of why they said it that way. If they leave because they are losing, that’s bad sportsmanship. If they leave because of injuries, that’s going to get more buy in. If he’d left out the part about the next game, that would have sounded better, but the way he said it, the optics are bad. It’s all about winning, isn’t it?
Maybe the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association could introduce a rule that says all participants in any competiton game must play stark naked. That would better expose the realities, and sort out the sheep from the goats.
Worth a try, surely. ;-)
This one’s going to be useful, because it’s a local news source that doesn’t seem to have any sort of ingrained political bias (unlike, say, the Daily Fail). That makes it harder for the folks who should know better to dismiss it out of hand.
This insanity — and that’s exactly what it is — has to end, someday. It just has to.
I, myself, have a hard time believing that any male who keeps his facial hair suffers from the degree of “dysphoria” about his gender sufficient to be able to claim he’s actually a woman. Are people so afraid to ask this simple question of them – “Why do you keep your whiskers?”
@Mike Haubrich
Trans people don’t OWE you Gender Dysphoria.
Not all trans people are dysphoric. Some are perfectly happy with their bodies not matching their minds. Stop gatekeeping.
Trans people owe me dysphoria, and several million dollars, and some chocolate.