A North Carolina high school volleyball player sustained a severe head injury after a transgender player spiked the ball at her head “abnormally fast,” according to a video of the incident.
The female player’s male-bodied opponent spiked the volleyball at approximately 70 mph, the Daily Mail reported. One bystander told the outlet that the spike was “abnormally fast” and struck the player’s head and neck.
After the incident, which occurred in September, the Cherokee County Board of Education voted 5-1 for the Hiwassee Dam High School girls volleyball team to forfeit games against Highlands School. The female athlete who was injured played for Hiwassee Dam, according to Fox News. She is still recovering from “long-term concussion symptoms,” including vision problems. She has not been approved to compete again.
“The county will not participate in any volleyball games, varsity or junior varsity, against Highlands due to safety concerns,” the board said, according to a write-up of the meeting.
Education First Alliance noted that Cherokee Board Member Joe Wood said during the meeting that he would “never put a child in a position to be seriously injured,” adding that “a coach of 40 years said they’d never seen a hit like this.”
A video of the incident was shared online late last week.
According to the board’s document, Hiwassee Dam’s athletic director, David Payne, supported the decision, claiming that “there is a competitive advantage and a safety concern for certain teams – it’s not the same for all teams.” He added that there were “mixed feelings” from athletes about competing against Highlands in the future.
Ian Miller at Outkick noted how male-bodied “transgender” athletes are often allowed to compete in women’s sports to protect and affirm their feelings rather than prioritizing the safety of the females athletes.
The dominant cultural conversation around transgender athletes, usually biological males, competing in girls and women’s sports has generally focused on the happiness of the male involved.
Instead of asking the girls how they feel about being forced to compete at a disadvantage after training and working hard to maximize their abilities, schools, administrators, corporations and the media choose to prioritize the feelings of the transgender person involved.
By focusing more on appeasing the gender activists who push for unrestricted competition at the expense of girls and women, these institutions have enabled this kind of behavior.
Their ideology and political agenda requires them to ignore the fundamental biological differences between men and women.
So young girls, through no fault of their own, are placed at increased risk to placate radical gender activists.
Earlier this year, the issue of biological males competing in women’s sports came to the forefront because of Will “Lia” Thomas, who competed on the women’s swim team at University of Pennsylvania after competing on the men’s team for three consecutive years. Thomas made headlines for breaking records competing against women and taking home an NCAA Division I title at the NCAA championships in March.
During the swim season, several of Thomas’ female teammates spoke to news outlets about the situation on the condition of anonymity. One female UPenn swimmer told The Washington Examiner that Thomas “compares herself to Jackie Robinson” and “mocks” competing on the women’s team, as Townhall covered. In addition, a teammate told Daily Mail that Thomas makes the women’s locker room uncomfortable, which Matt covered.
“It’s definitely awkward because Lia still has male body parts and is still attracted to women,” the swimmer told Daily Mail. “But we were basically told that we could not ostracize Lia by not having her in the locker room and that there’s nothing we can do about it, that we basically have to roll over and accept it, or we cannot use our own locker room.”
In the aftermath, many states and school districts have instated policies banning transgender athletes from girls’ sports.
In June, the Independent Women’s Forum hosted a rally to protect women’s sports from male-bodied athletes on the 50th anniversary of Title IX. During the rally, several athletes I spoke to said they are concerned about the future of women’s sports if transgender athletes continue to compete against women.
"I have firsthand knowledge of what it feels like to line up next to a male-bodied athlete," world champion track athlete Cynthia Monteleone told Townhall. "I'm also a coach to young athletes and Olympians. And for my young athletes, it's really important that when I teach them lessons like 'hard work pays off' that that rings true...that lesson falls apart when they have to line up next to someone who, quite literally, can be a mediocre athlete and still win."