Video: GameTimeCT
Earlier this week when Connecticut held its CIAC Track & Field Championships, the previous records for girls were broken in both the 100 and 200-meter runs.
A transgender, won the events. Another transgender, was the runner up in the 100 meter dash.
According to the Connecticut Post, the results are causing some controversy.
“A lot of people have asked, can you run a separate race, can you put an asterisk next to their name, do something that shows there is a standard that is different from that?” said CIAC executive director Karissa Niehoff. “When you get into that playing out, you have got civil rights issues.
“Then within the same gender, you are taking one population of the gender and you’re separating them and creating another class. That’s what Title IX speaks to. That’s what Office of Civil Rights guidelines speak to. You cannot discriminate based on gender. And in our case in Connecticut, gender is gender identity.”
Yet what about the two girls who worked for years who got knocked out of the finals by Miller and Yearwood? And what about the two girls who finished seventh and eighth in the finals who were denied a chance to compete in the New England championships?
“We do feel for them,” Niehoff said. “Fully agree it doesn’t feel good. The optic isn’t good. But we really do have to look at the bigger issues that speak to civil rights and the fact this is high school sports.”