LGBTQ Rights

Despite online outrage, the California state track meet was mostly just a track meet defector.com/despite-onli…

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— Defector (@defector.com) June 2, 2025 at 8:53 PM

The always insightful Diana Moskovitz, at Defector – “Despite Online Outrage, The California State Track Meet Was Mostly Just A Track Meet”:

Jurupa Valley High School’s AB Hernandez won first place in girls high jump and triple jump on Saturday night at the California Interscholastic Federation’s State Track & Field Championships. She also took second place in girls long jump, making it overall a great performance for the high school junior. After each win, Hernandez took the podium, received her medal, and smiled for photos along with her fellow competitors. She looked happy, because most people do after they win. As the sun sunk lower in the sky and the late afternoon turned into night, it would look to a casual observer watching on a livestream, which I did, like a typical high school track meet: The national anthem was played, there was a reminder about good sportsmanship, high school athletes competed in various disciplines, upcoming events were called out on the loudspeaker, and parents and friends cheered in the stands…

Though Hernandez has competed for years with the support of her local community, when two women began making noise online complaining about her being allowed to compete, they got a lot of attention and eventually caught Donald Trump’s eye. He issued a statement Tuesday about Hernandez, filled with inaccuracies, saying she was unbeatable (she has lost before) and had won everything (again, she has lost before). That same day, CIF issued its own statement, saying it would launch a pilot program to allow any cisgender female athlete who missed out on qualifying due to a transgender female athlete to compete anyway. Those new rules were also why on Saturday, every time Hernandez won a medal, she had to share the podium with someone else as a co-medalist.

The new rules also did nothing to assuage the people dead set on stopping Hernandez… Even though Hernandez had followed all the CIF rules in place, that did little to stop the anti-trans sentiments. On Friday, during qualifications, an airplane flew over the stadium carrying a banner that read “No boys in girls sports!”

The same reporter who got the video of the banner, Haley Sawyer, estimated the number of protestors there Friday at “roughly 10.”

You read that right—10. California is the largest state by population in the entire country with nearly 40 million people. Sure, some people have to work, some people are busy with childcare, or too frail to travel, or they’re students who have to study. But the math is the math. Out of a state with nearly 40 million people, just about 10 were so angry about Hernandez competing that they showed up at Veterans Memorial Stadium in Clovis, Fresno County. That’s the same Fresno County that has an estimated population of more than 1 million, is nearly equidistant to the state’s two biggest metro areas, and is easily accessible by car…

What those railing against Hernandez know is that in today’s decentralized information ecosystem, anger online wins and so their yelling must be covered, even though few protestors came. Meanwhile, the single biggest source of complaints about discrimination to the U.S. Department of Education are from disabled students who said they had been denied help they needed or felt mistreated, not people complaining about trans athletes. Data also shows the biggest danger posed to all high school athletes, regardless of gender, is dying of sudden cardiac arrest, not competing against trans athletes. Having emergency action plans and installing AEDs in high schools would save more lives, but little is said about this online compared to the trans athlete furor.

Despite it all, the actual athletes seemed pretty chill and normal on Saturday as I monitored from the live stream and watched the press coverage roll in. They are athletes, after all, and they know how to block out noise. It’s all smiles in the Associated Press photos. Wilson High School senior Loren Webster, who came in first in the long jump, told the Times as much, saying, “It wasn’t any other person I was worried about. I knew what I was capable of. I can’t control the uncontrollable.” Long Beach Poly High School senior Jillene Wetteland, who also took first in the high jump, told the Chronicle, “I love both of the people I tied with.” And River City High School senior Brooke White, who came in second on the long jump, said to the same reporter that it was an honor to share her podium with Hernandez…

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