This video has sparked a major debate on coed sports with many people saying males should not be participating in sports against women. This video shows a male field hockey player shooting the ball so hard that it knocked a female's teeth out and parents, teammates, and many others are outraged. This incident took place between two Massachusetts high school field hockey teams. Field hockey is generally a female sport, but there's some rules or laws in place in Massachusetts that apparently let this guy join the girls team and now here we are with another player having her teeth knocked out. A sports article on WCVB reported on this, saying the following:
Dighton-Rehoboth Superintendent Bill Runey said in a letter to families that a shot taken by a male member of the Swampscott team left one of their female players with "significant facial and dental injuries," which included having two of her teeth knocked out. The Dighton-Rehoboth player was hospitalized. "While I understand that the MIAA has guidelines in place for co-ed participation under section 43 of their handbook, this incident dramatically magnifies the concerns of many about player safety," Runey wrote.
Swampscott Public Schools Athletic Director Kelly Wolff identified the player who took the shot as a 4-year varsity player and co-captain. Wolff emphasized the male player "has the exact same right to participate as any player on any team."
The Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association issued a statement in which the organization also expressed concern for the injured player while summarizing their view of the legal situation.
If you ask me, this is nonsense. The boys should be on the boys team. The girls should be on the girls team. There is no reason they need to compete officially against each other in a sport like field hockey. There just isn't. This is common sense and it seems like Democrats are throwing that out the window more and more each day. They're too busy focused on people's feelings and not on the actual common sense part of life. If I was that girl's parents who got her teeth knocked out, then I would sue everyone responsible for it. Below is a copy of the statement made by the MIAA:
The Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association has been made aware of an injury that occurred during a field hockey tournament game played Thursday.
First and foremost, our concern is for the health and recovery of the injured student-athlete, as well as of the well-being of all affected student-athletes, coaches and administrators from both schools.
The MIAA supports our 383 member schools and all student-athletes as we strive to create a welcoming, safe and belonging atmosphere for all participants. In doing so, the association and member schools must adhere to all federal and state laws to assure equitable opportunities for students of different sexes or genders.
The following is a chronology of the basis of the MIAA’s adherence to federal and state law.
Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibits discrimination based on sex in school programs, including athletics. Title IX does not require schools to offer identical sports for boys and girls, but an equal opportunity to play.
Massachusetts schools must also comply with the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which is part of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights and Constitution. The ERA states that “equality under the law shall not be abridged because of sex, race, color, creed or national origin.” The ERA was applied to school athletics in 1979 in the matter of Attorney General v. MIAA, 378 Mass. 342 (1979), a case which schools continue to follow today. ERA also has been applied in such a way as to allow for mixed gender teams. The court determined that a blanket rule prohibiting boys from playing on girls teams, where there was no equivalent boys team, violated the ERA.
As a result of this 1979 ruling, the MIAA amended its rules to state, “A girl may play on a boys’ team if that sport is not offered in the school for the girl, and a boy may play on a girls’ team if that sport is not offered in the school for the boy.” Boys have been competing on girls’ teams, and girls have been competing on boys’ teams, for more than forty (40) years.
(Please refer to the Legal Note in the MIAA Handbook for further explanation.)
Massachusetts General Law was originally enacted to protect students from discrimination based on sex, and later expanded to protect students based on gender identification. As a result of this law, and consistent with the interpretive guidance offered by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, athletic opportunities must be afforded to students in accordance with their identified gender, not necessarily their birth-assigned gender.
We respect and understand the complexity and concerns that exist regarding student safety. However, student safety has not been a successful defense to excluding students of one gender from participating on teams of the opposite gender. The arguments generally fail due to the lack of correlation between injuries and mixed-gender teams.
The MIAA will promote activities that provide lifelong and life-quality learning experiences to students while enhancing their achievement of educational goals.
