A male athlete took three state titles at the California girls track and field championships last weekend, leaving female athletes behind for the second year in a row.
AB Hernandez, a boy who “identifies” as a girl, took first place in the girls high jump and triple jump on Saturday, the same events he won in last year’s championship. He also took third in the girls long jump. Last year, he placed second.
Female athletes displaced by Hernandez shared the podium with him.
The California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) instituted this policy days before last year’s track and field finals to ward off a federal lawsuit. President Donald Trump had threatened to withhold federal funding to the California Department of Education for allowing Hernandez, a boy, to participate in the competition.
“This is not fair and totally demeaning to women and girls,” the president wrote on social media after Hernandez qualified for state in May 2025.
“This is a totally ridiculous situation!!!”
CIF’s split-podium solution did not satisfy the Department of Justice, which filed a scathing lawsuit against the California Department of Education for “illegal sex discrimination” last July.
But some, like the opinion writer who decried the “pathetic right-wing crusade against a high school track athlete” in the Orange County Register this weekend, argue it works well enough.
Hernandez gets to compete with girls. Girls don’t lose their rightful spots. What more could female athletes ask for?
Sigh.
First and foremost, CIF did not start allowing displaced female athletes to stand next to Hernandez until the last three competitions of the season. Prior to that, he competed in nine regular season meets and two post-season meets, where he jumped a total of thirty times.
He placed first in 28 of them.
If CIF acknowledges biology matters in its most important competitions of the year, why would it fail to implement a split-podium strategy in all its competitions?
I suspect CIF doesn’t care for female athletes or biology at all but, rather, its image, which becomes exponentially more visible during the finals.
But it wouldn’t matter if CIF proposed adopting a split-podium strategy all year. It’s still a woefully inadequate solution to a problem with an obvious fix — separating sports by sex.
Just as female athletes should have equal opportunity to compete in sports, they should have an equal opportunity to celebrate hard-won victories. That includes relishing standing atop of the podium, alone, in the space they earned.
Adults should not expect girls to sacrifice their experience of achievement to ease the discomfort of boys with sexual identity issues. Boys with sexual identity confusion should not feel entitled to spaces created specifically for female athletes who win.
Adults who belittle girls for being too “selfish” to relinquish their winning moment to transgender-identified boys are engaging in misogyny.
Allowing male athletes to share podiums with female athletes doesn’t address the significant safety issues associated with allowing boys to play in girls sports.
One recurring problem is forcing members of the opposite sex to share bathrooms and locker rooms. Hernandez’ use of the girls’ locker room while he played girls volleyball is part of an ongoing Title IX suit against Jurupa Valley Unified School District.
Hadeel Hazimeh and Madison McPherson, who played volleyball with Hernandez, sued the district last fall for forcing them to play volleyball and share a locker room with a male teammate — Hernandez. The duo left the team over concerns about modesty and their physical safety.
“Over the year, I witnessed the boy go through puberty,” McPherson spoke at a press conference held by California Family Council in February. “No girl on the volleyball team grew in strength and agility like he did.”
When she raised concerns with her school, McPherson said administrators “treated [her] as if [she] was the problem.”
“I witnessed many girls get hurt, including my sister, and the school did nothing,” she recalled.
Adults who sympathize with Hernandez often drown out the experiences of victims like McPherson and Hazimeh.
Some, like the Orange County Register columnist, characterize criticism of Hernandez as “picking on high schoolers.”
“It’s all pretty pathetic,” he writes.
Others go out of their way to lift Hernandez up. California gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer publicly wished Hernandez would do “very well” at state in a video posted to X.
Supporters of Hernandez seem to view him as one person against the world. His copious victims, in their minds, do not count against him, but make him an underdog — one offender bullied by a mass of people he offended against.
Outside this narrative, in reality, Hernandez is not the victim. He made choices which injured hundreds of girls in California — every single one he ever competed against.
His choices secured him dozens of accolades meant for girls. But they also make a justified target of censure for his treatment of female athletes.
The Daily Citizen will not apologize for defending women’s sports and biological reality. Christian believers shouldn’t either.
To learn more about male incursions into female sports, and what you can do to help, read the Daily Citizen’s article, “‘Save Girls Sports’ on the November Ballot”
Additional Articles and Resources
Boys Atop Girls’ Podiums: Where Are the Dads?
Girls Volleyball Team Forfeits Game to Avoid Playing Boy
DOJ Lawsuit Describes California Department of Education’s Infuriating Treatment of Girls
Feds Pressure California After Boy Wins in Girls Track and Field Championship
California Sues DOJ Over ‘Transgender’ Athlete Ban
Washington School District Buries Female Wrestler’s Sexual Assault Complaint Against Male Opponent
Feds Open Yet Another Title IX Investigation Into Loudoun County Schools
Photo Credit: Kirby Lee/Getty Images
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