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A dozen Washington state girl athletes just made national news by protesting rules that made them compete against a boy, but the state’s adults may make far bigger news next month by voting to toss those same rules.
At a cross-country-team race Tuesday, the Camas HS girls did something their coaches presumably hadn’t trained them to do: They walked off the course.
They were refusing to compete against a male teammate; other girls from rival Battle Ground also chose to walk the course in protest.
Yet while it was the girls who left the race, it was the adults responsible for this travesty who stole their chances to compete — and that may soon change.
The male runner, Logan Mihailoff, began the season competing for Camas in the boys’ junior-varsity division, finishing 76th at a Sept. 5 race.
A few weeks later, he switched to the girls’ division.
His performance — er, relative performance — suddenly soared: On Sept. 26, he finished second among 195 girls in a race at the Nike Portland Invitational.
Three days later, he won a girls’ varsity race against Union HS, finishing ahead of every single one of the 45 biological female runners.
From 76th in boys’ junior varsity to first in girls’ varsity in 24 days.
At the Oct. 10 Hole in the Wall Invitational, an elite girls’ tournament, Mihailoff finished 39th among 135 girls in the elite race; his time would’ve placed him last among the 159 finishers in the boys’ elite race.
On Tuesday he finished second in the girls’ varsity 5,000-meter event, beating at least a dozen girls.
Pro-trans advocates argue that there are so few boys competing in girls’ sports that it’s a non-issue. They cite percentages and ask why anyone should care.
Yet while only one boy might identify as a girl, 100 female competitors may be impacted.
Two Skyview HS female runners, Charlie Garrett and Sierra Retzlaff, began the protests.
At a September meet against Camas, they lined up with messages supporting women’s sports painted on their bodies, then stepped off the course.
“We did it because we didn’t want to act like we were OK with what was happening,” explained Retzlaff.
Camas says it is following state law and Washington Interscholastic Activities Association rules, which permit participation based on gender identity.
That bureaucratic explanation leaves girls with a miserable choice: accept the unfair competition or sacrifice your own opportunity.
Other Washington athletes know that choice. Tumwater HS basketball player Frances Staudt refused to play against a male opponent.
She faced a school investigation over allegations of harassment and misgendering.
Female wrestler Kallie Keeler alleges she wasn’t told she’d face a biological male opponent and that he sexually assaulted her during a girls’ tournament.
Prosecutors declined to charge the opponent, concluding they couldn’t prove a crime beyond a reasonable doubt.
Keeler and her mother are now seeking changes to the rules that include advance notice and the ability to decline matches against males without penalty.
Ahnaleigh Wilson, an Eastmont HS runner who has spoken publicly about losing to a male athlete, found another way to push back: She showed up to support WNBA star Sophie Cunningham — and wound up sparking a national protest.
The Indiana Fever guard wants “to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.”
In July, her supporters gathered outside Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena before Cunningham and her team played the Seattle Storm.
Inside, Wilson and another teen girl held a sign thanking the Fever star.
A Storm co-owner then confronted them, swearing at the girls and leaving one in tears.
Public backlash forced the team to apologize, and the co-owner received a fine and a five-home-game suspension.
Cunningham backs the teenagers: “Bravo to those girls for standing up for what they believe.”
Wilson’s protest caught fire nationally.
And on Nov. 3, voters in Washington will decide whether to reserve girls’ school sports for biological females.
Initiative IL26-638 would prohibit biological males from competing in designated girls’ school sports.
It would require verification of biological sex from the athlete’s personal health-care provider as part of the routine sports physical every athlete is required to take before competing.
If that citizen initiative can win in cobalt-blue Washington, it could have a national domino effect, like the rallies in support of Cunningham.
Democratic politicians elsewhere will have a harder time pretending that defending female athletes is some fringe Republican obsession.
Democrats shouldn’t be surprised if this generation of female high-school athletes votes red when it turns 18.
The party that used to say it stood for feminism is betraying our girls, and the girls are fighting for themselves.
Shame on the adults for making them.
Ari Hoffman hosts “The Ari Hoffman Show” on Seattle’s Talk Radio 570 KVI and is the Post Millennial’s West Coast editor.