Clearing a low bar

Perhaps no sport better highlights the need for legislation prohibiting male athletes from competing against girls or women than track and field.

Look up any state’s high school records online: Boys consistently post faster times than girls in running events. Boys clear higher bars in the high jump and pole vault, leap farther in the long and triple jumps. And in throwing events like the shot put and discus, boys’ throws typically outdistance girls’ by a considerable margin—and boys hurl heavier objects to boot.

Against this background, in our LGBT-enabling culture, it comes as no surprise that male athletes who otherwise wouldn’t come close to winning state titles or breaking state records on their best day conveniently discover why athletic glory has eluded them: They’ve been competing in the wrong category all along – they’re really girls.

Or so they claim.

Maelle Jacques became the latest example of this trend in early February: The sophomore from Kearsarge Regional High became the first male athlete to claim a New Hampshire track-and-field girls’ title, winning the high jump in the small-school division at the state’s indoor championships with a leap of 5 feet, 2 inches, according to multiple websites.

Some media outlets have reported that Jacques’ jump was even lower. But even at 5’2”, Jacques’ jump was eight inches lower than that of the boys’ champion in the same event, who went over at 6 feet even.

The lowest height a boy cleared was 5 feet, 8 inches. Against boys, Jacques would have been among the first jumpers eliminated—and that’s assuming he would have even qualified for the state meet competing as a male.

The national high school record in the girls’ high jump is 6 feet, 4½ inches, set by Vashti Cunningham of Nevada’s Bishop Gorman High in 2015. By comparison, the top boys’ marks are all higher than seven feet.

Jacques isn’t the only male athlete from the northeastern United States who has dominated in track and field after self-identifying as female: Sadie (formerly Camden) Schreiner, a sprinter for Rochester Institute of Technology in New York who competed against boys in high school, now owns school women’s indoor records in both the 200 meters (25.27 seconds) and the 300 (41.80), setting both this season. Sprinters Terry Miller and Andraya Yearwood rewrote Connecticut’s high school record books between 2017 and 2020, capturing 15 state indoor and outdoor crowns between them—it’s why several of their female former competitors are suing to have those records and titles invalidated.

CeCe (formerly Craig) Telfer of New Hampshire’s Franklin Pierce University became the NCAA’s first male women’s champion in 2019, claiming the 400-meter hurdles title in Division II. And a high-school hurdler, Chloe Barnes, helped Massachusetts’ Brookline High win a state team girls’ indoor championship in 2023, one year after competing as a boy.

Even with their championship-winning and/or record-setting times, none of them would have reached the medal stand against boys. Telfer, in fact, barely ranked in the top 400 in his event before competing against women in his final collegiate season.

School district officials and state legislators in New Hampshire have heard the outrage over Jacques’ state title. Newsflash: They don’t care. In their view, state and federal law as well as interscholastic federation rules—not to mention the emotional fragility of athletes who self-identify as “transgender”—require that inclusion trump fairness in competition.

Politicians also love to deny that male athletes do not start identifying as female just to gain a competitive advantage in their sports. If that’s true, why are we not seeing elite male athletes suddenly switching genders? For that matter, why do female athletes who self-identify as male, such as former Yale University swimmer Iszac (formerly Izzi) Henig, still choose to compete against women?

I think we know the answer to both questions: Elite male athletes don’t feel the need to beat women. And female athletes know there’s no competitive advantage to be gained from competing against men—it’s why there’s a women’s category to begin with.

Here’s the thing: Even the most LGBT-friendly coaches, parents, athletes, and sports reporters recognize an inherent unfairness in letting male athletes with obvious biological advantages become champions against women when they’d be mediocre at best against men. Yet they still allow it to happen.

So, for that matter, do some who oppose the inclusion of male athletes in girls’ and women’s competitions: They don’t make their voices heard anywhere near loudly enough and don’t take action to try and keep women’s sports exclusively for women and girls.

Perhaps those individuals fear being labeled “bigots,” “transphobes,” or whatever else. That’s understandable. But it also perpetuates the lunacy and hurts real female athletes in the process.

Which is why I say to sophomore Savanna Comeau of New Hampshire’s Somersworth High, whose backward leap of 5 feet, 2 inches equaled Jacques’ winning jump (though she needed more jumps to get there): Congratulations to the true 2024 New Hampshire Division II girls’ indoor high jump champion. It’s the truth.