Sometime in the mid 70’s when I was in 7th or 8th grade, I remember a discussion in my junior high social studies class about whether or not openly gay students should be allowed to participate in high school sports. Someone—and it might even have been the teacher—asked the question that always seems to come up during these kinds of conversations: What about the locker room? Wouldn’t having a gay athlete in the locker room make all the other kids feel uncomfortable? Seems ludicrous now, right? That we were actually debating whether or not public schools should allow gay kids to play sports. And, that we would weigh the argument for inclusion against the comfort level of kids who weren’t gay? Of course, we can look back to that time now and think that, as a country, we just weren’t ready or that people just didn’t understand. We know better now, so we’re doing better now, right? Regardless of a person or a group’s personal beliefs, we have agreed, as a country, that discriminating against a person, student or otherwise, on the basis of sexual orientation is not only immoral, it is illegal. We’ve come a long way.Or, have we? The recent debate about whether transgender kids should be allowed to compete in high school sports feels eerily familiar to me. In fact, it feels a lot like that conversation in middle school. This post is not meant to be political. I do not want to talk about my political beliefs or challenge anyone else’s. I am coming from the position of child advocacy and my decision to write about this issue is informed by two things: First, my concern for the physical, psychological and emotional well-being of children. As a person who has committed her entire adult life to education, I understand deeply the way that exclusion lands on children and the way that inclusive policies in education have made schools safer and more equitable spaces. Secondly, my position as a female athlete, a mother, a teacher and a coach for most of my 62 years. 55 years of playing and watching sports; 37 years of teaching high school English, which means 37 years of conversations with high school kids and 37 years of reading journals and personal essays written by teenagers. 37 years of coaching everything from youth soccer to high school basketball to high school boys and girls tennis. In short, my life has given me the privilege of working closely with thousands of high school students and student athletes over almost four decades. I keep thinking that if I don’t have the agency and insight—and maybe even the responsibility—to talk about this issue, who does?And to be perfectly clear, I want to limit this conversation to the realm of my own knowledge and experience and to the credible body of research that informs my understanding about this issue. I don’t want to talk about college or Olympic athletes, the science of hormones, puberty or gender affirming care. I want to start and end the conversation with high school athletics and why I am so absolute in my belief that transgender high school students should have the legally protected right to play high school sports.Transgender High School StudentsThis is what I know about transgender high school students: They exist. It feels a little sad to have to make this assertion, but recent actions by federal officials have moved to recognize only two unchangeable genders, essentially trying to eliminate transgender as a legal designation. As an educator who works directly with high school students, I know that transgender students exist and that efforts by schools to be more inclusive in recent years did not create more transgender students, they created more space for them to be themselves. No dropped letter in an acronym or change in designation can erase human beings. Of course it’s complicated for some people to understand and as those people grapple to accept and support what they don’t fully understand, there can be lots of room for assumptions, misinformation and theoretical what ifs. That is why it is so important to follow the research. To that end, my conversation here relies heavily on the first nationally representative study on transgender students, published by the CDC (Center for Disease Control) in 2023. That data, collected from 20,000 high school students, reveals some important facts: 3.3% of high school students in the United States identified as transgender 2.2% of high school students identified as questioning their gender identityTransgender and questioning students were more likely to experience violence, poor mental health, suicidal thoughts and behaviors, and unstable housing25.3% of transgender students and 26.4% of questioning students skipped school because they felt unsafe40% of transgender and questioning students were bullied at school69% of questioning students and 72% of transgender students experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessnessIn summary, over 3% of high school students in the United States identify as transgender and an additional 2.2% say they are questioning their gender identity. By and large, transgender and questioning students are more likely to experience violence, poor mental health, suicidal ideation and unstable housing. One in four have attempted suicide. Many of theses students have felt unsafe at school, due to bullying and many have skipped or avoided school as a result. A profoundly high percentage (70%) of these students report persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness. High School SportsThis is what I know about high school sports: Most kids play to have fun and be with their friends. Being a member of a team is often like being a member of a family and for many kids, the teams they belong to are the most consistent and supportive social networks they have. Not only do sports help high school kids to develop strong social connections and a sense of belonging, but they also help them to develop positive life skills, like self-discipline, confidence and resilience. A large-scale 2021 study by the Aspen Institute (a non-profit organization devoted to gathering non-partisan information about complex problems) underscores my own experience. According to their research, the main reasons for playing high school sports were having fun (81%), getting exercise (79%), learning and improving skills (66%) and playing and make new friends (64%). Only 53% of students said their main reason for playing was winning games. Additionally, this research revealed some of the significant benefits of being active in high school sports, which include: less likely to smoke and use drugs; less likely to get pregnant in high school; more likely to go to college; higher self-esteem and lower levels of depression. Lifelong benefits include developing better self awareness, increased empathy and the cultivation of lifelong health and fitness habits. The Problem The most popular concern regarding this issue is that trans female athletes have an unfair advantage over other female athletes. In researching how often this happens, it is almost impossible to identify even a single episode of a trans female athlete impacting girls sports at the high school level. Credible data from multiple sources suggests that there are fewer than 100 known transgender athletes competing on K-12 girls teams nationwide and very few of those who have made enough of an impact on their sport to raise objections from people concerned with fairness. In 2021, when a spate of laws excluding trans high school athletes first began to be enacted by various states, the Associated Press contacted 20 legislators sponsoring bills in their states and not one could produce a single situation in which a trans athlete capitalized on an unfair advantage in their state or region. One lawmaker suggested that the laws were meant to “prevent possible problems in the future” (AP, 2021).Well, it’s four years later and while I did find two reports of trans female athletes who had impacted their high school sports in a significant way—a cross country runner at a private school in Seattle (Fox News, 2022) and more recently, a pole vaulter in Maine (Newsweek, 2025)—the cases are still exceedingly rare. According to most sources, transgender students’ participation in sports has been a non-issue. In many states (including the one I work in) athletic organizations and their governing bodies have successfully been able to balance fairness, inclusion, and access to play without any problem. Why is there so much attention given to a problem that doesn’t really seem to be a problem? According to the Human Rights Campaign, many of the same groups who fought against marriage equality and other LGBTQ+ issues have worked intentionally to amplify and distort information about this issue, often focusing on a handful of elite adult trans athletes, such as Lia Thomas and Imane Khelif, rather than on actual high school athletes. The result is that many well-intentioned people believe that girls’ high school sports are being completely overrun by trans athletes who are dominating competitions and breaking records. That might be why people seem so complacent about the “Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act,” a House of Representatives bill, passed less than two weeks ago, that promises to withhold federal funds from K-12 schools that allow transgender girls to play on girls’ sports teams. It is unfathomable to me that our country is pushing out a law that requires educators to exclude children from participating in a school activity based on their identity or risk federal funding. Thankfully, the state I teach and coach in is among the few who has said that it will not comply and will, instead, follow the current federal guidelines.Final ThoughtsIt might be that bill that finally broke my heart enough to want to write this piece. Or, maybe it was the idea that with a stroke of a pen, our government would attempt to erase a group of our citizens—citizens who want nothing more than the freedom to be themselves. Children—and especially trans children—need us to stand up and say that we see them and that we accept and support them. Protecting their right to participate in high school sports is not only one small way to do that, but also a clear signal to all children that transgender students belong. Sports are many things to many kids, but at the end of the day, the main reason kids play them is to have fun and to enjoy a sense of community. Why would we want to deny that to the kids who need it most? References & Resourceshttps://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/73/su/su7304a6.htm# https://www.aspeninstitute.org/news/sport-for-all/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/02/26/ https://www.hrc.org/resources/get-the-facts-about-transgender-non-binary-athletes https://apnews.com/article/lawmakers-unable-to-cite-local-trans-girls-sports https://www.nfhs.org/media/5919559/workshop-16.pdf https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion https://www.newsweek.com/how-many-transgender-athletes-play-womens-sports-https://www.newyorker.com/sports/sporting-scene/ https://www.foxnews.com/sports/transgender-female-dominating-new-cross-country-competition-struggling-boys https://www.aclu.org/news/lgbtq-rights/four-myths-about-trans-athletes-debunked https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/anti-lgbt-victimization-us/
