Title 9 was passed for a reason. It gave girls the right to participate in sports. It gave girls the ability to work hard for goals in physical fitness and develop the ability to work as a team and achieve long-lasting leadership skills. 45 years ago, title 9 opened doors for me, a shy high school girl. I am all for transgender rights but NOT at the expense of women’s rights. Allowing biological boys to complete in girls’ sports is obstructing women’s rights! If this continues, girls’ sports will become obsolete. It’s upsetting to see the doors that opened to me 45 years ago are being slammed in high school and college athletes’ faces.
41 years ago as a high school senior, we had a large spring girls track and field team but no indoor track team. So 4 of us girls ran on the boys’ indoor team. We didn’t have an indoor track so we had to bundle up and do interval training running around the block behind the school and grueling hill workouts up the school driveway. When the weather was too snowy and icy to run safely outside we would run up and down the school hallways. We did every workout the boys did – we didn’t cut any corners. However, we couldn’t compete. We ran in some of the boys’ meets but never came close to placing. At the end of the season, the coach took us to the Massachusetts girls’ indoor track and field championships. I came in first in the 1000 yd run (state record), teammates Sari came in first in the hurdles and Caroline 3rd in the 600 yd run. Then the 3 of us teamed up with Iris and came in second in the mile relay. The 4 of us earned enough points to win states as a team!! And later all 4 of us went on to compete in college.
Women’s sports has been and still is [an] important part of my life and it breaks my heart to see the opportunities I had being stripped away from high school and college women by transgender athletes.