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| Field hockey has become a faster and more dangerous sport in recent years. |
Something terrible happened in a local high school field hockey game recently, and because of the unique nature of the circumstance, it has become a national story -- and a talking point for those on the conservative side of the ledger that point to this situation as an example of the decline of this country's moral fiber.
Which is bullshit, of course.
But that doesn't stop the reactionary souls that raptly absorb the daily dose of right-wing propaganda that's spewed with impunity by Fox News and other so-called conservative media organizations. Armed with very little actual knowledge and a snootful of manufactured outrage, lots of those slack-jawed Fox viewers have come forth to comment upon a story in our local newspaper and offer their unsupported opinions that hordes of virile and burly young male athletes are plotting to take over women's sports.
That couldn't be further from the truth. But it does play into the Trump-tainted Republican Party's national agenda to vilify transgender athletes that are seeking equal opportunity to compete. It doesn't even matter that there were no transgender athletes involved in this particular circumstance; the GOP has prospered by embracing the notion that you never need to confuse a good rant with facts.
Here, as far as I know, is what happened.
The Dighton-Rehoboth Regional High School field hockey team, seeded No. 21 in the MIAA Division 3 state tournament, was playing on Thursday at No. 12 Swampscott in the Round of 32. With about three minutes left in the third quarter and D-R trailing 1-0, Swampscott set up for an offensive corner, and the ball was sent out to a Swampscott player at the top of the circle, who sent an elevated shot toward the goal. The shooter was a male athlete.
The shot struck a Dighton-Rehoboth defender in the face, and the result of the impact was catastrophic. The player had several teeth knocked out and suffered other facial injuries, according to media reports.
There is a video of the play making the rounds of the Internet. It's not a close-up and it's very difficult to determine exactly what happened from it. A statement released by the Swampscott athletic director later that night claimed that the male player's shot was actually deflected off another player's stick before it hit the unidentified D-R player in the face. That is not easy to confirm from the video that is available.
Of course, this was a terrible accident, an unintentional injury that is the direct result of athletes hitting a very hard ball with sticks against athletes that are wearing no specific facial protection. But the fact that a male athlete hit the ball has unleashed a wave of outrage from those that have been conditioned to view any mixed-gender situation as a left-wing conspiracy to take away the rights of female athletes.
In a matter of a few hours, suddenly this boy became a physically mature and burly man with a linebacker's body who unleashed a fearsome slap shot into the face of the D-R girl, and then gloated about it because it is the Democrat agenda for men to take over girls' sports. All of that is absolutely untrue. I was not present at the game and can only go by the images in the fuzzy video, but it appeared to me that a tallish and slender individual took a low swing at the ball off the corner pass, followed by piercing screams of anguish from the injured player and by her horrified teammates.
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Interviewing injured athletes has
never been an easy thing to do. |
I hate to see injuries. I've seen far too many of them since I started covering high school sports in 1969. I've even suffered a few of my own, and they remind me to this day of the damage they caused. I've seen people carried off fields, rinks and basketball courts and I've winced in sympathetic pain at their suffering. And worst of all, I have seen two young men playing in football games that were subjected to seemingly innocuous contact but were never again able to get up on their own for the rest of their lives. Risk is part of athletic competition, but sometimes it seems so damned unreasonable.
If there is any good news to be found, it's that the injured D-R athlete has been released from the hospital. She will need a lot of recovery time and the hard work of talented medical personnel for the purpose of restoration, and I can only hope she will find solace and strength in the support and love from her family and friends.
As for this particular instance, it was absolutely legal for that male athlete to be competing in that game -- and it's my guess is that 95 percent of the commenting individuals aren't even remotely aware of the rules governing mixed-gender teams in this state.
The truth is, field hockey in this state has been open to male participation almost since Title IX of the federal Education Amendments of 1972 was put into effect to ensure equal opportunity for female athletes. Locally, Norton High School became the first area school to have a boy on its field hockey team in the late 1970s. That young man (not identified here because I don't feel it's necessary to involve him in a totally unrelated controversy) was the Lancers' goalkeeper and he was pretty good, although not at all dominant. And while he was somewhat of a novelty at the time, I never sensed that there were many objections to his presence.
This state codified the provisions of Title IX by adopting the Massachusetts Equal Rights Amendment in 1979, and the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association amended its own rules that same year 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.”
Over the 44 years since it became legal for such mixed-gender teams to exist, there has not been a flood of young boys looking to play girls' sports, or girls seeking to join boys' teams. But I do remember some notable examples.
When I worked at The Patriot Ledger of Quincy in the 1980s, I wrote about a female goalie on the boys' ice hockey team at what was then Plymouth-Carver Regional High School. She was pretty good and got regular turns in goal. I've since known of a smattering of girls on local football teams, including Foxboro High. This year, I know of girls on the roster at Tri-County and Taunton; the Taunton girl is a placekicker that has contributed a few extra points and sometimes handles kickoffs.
There have been other, more notorious instances. Not long ago, Somerset Berkley Regional High had two boys starting on its field hockey roster and it won two state titles in a four-year period. Some schools didn't want to play Somerset Berkley because they believed the two boys created an uneven playing field.
Some local girls' volleyball teams also had to make room for boys because their schools did not offer boys' volleyball. For a while, the MIAA tried to restrict boys on volleyball teams to back-row play because it was feared that their potentially powerful spikes could injure players on the other side of the net, but that guideline was prohibited by the provisions of the 1979 legislation.
In many cases, schools just bit the bullet and started to fund teams for both genders in a number of sports such as ice hockey, lacrosse and volleyball. Girls are still participating in football and wrestling and boys in field hockey because there just isn't the demand among athletes to field new same-sex teams.
In the wake of the tragic injury to the D-R athlete, one of her teammates wrote an essay that D-R Schools Supt. Bill Runey (the former Attleboro High principal) forwarded to the MIAA. It was a well-written and well-researched piece that offered objections to the participation of males on female field hockey teams due to the many physiological differences in the sexes. The essay also claims that 41 males are playing field hockey in Massachusetts at the present time.
That may sound like a lot, and I was hoping for more context -- such as how many athletes in total compete in field hockey. I found some figures on the National Federation of High Schools website, and I will attempt to provide some context from them.
There are 383 schools that are members of the MIAA, but not all of them compete in all sports. Field hockey is one of the oldest offerings, but not everyone plays it; Norton has since dropped its team, while Bishop Feehan added it only a few years ago. The NFHS says that 218 Massachusetts schools compete in field hockey, with a total of 6,743 athletes participating. What I found does not offer a breakdown for varsity, junior varsity or freshman athletes.
So if 41 boys are participating, that comes out to 0.6 percent (0.006). Even if there are more boys playing at the lower levels, the percentage is still negligible.
That's not an invasion. That's not a caravan at the border. That's not the first sign of the apocalypse. It's not an ideal situation for either gender, but it's not the collapse of Western civilization, either.
I have to admit, I'm no expert in field hockey. I do know that in some countries, particularly India and Pakistan, field hockey is a men's sport. My high school sweetheart was briefly the goalie of the Mansfield High JV team before Title IX. I took a brief interest in the sport later in the 1970s because I was dating the coach of the Seekonk High team. Neither the relationship nor the interest lasted. But field hockey was a big part of the comprehensive coverage of local high school sports that we offered at my newspaper, so I didn't ignore it.
But in the last five years, in my new role as a play-by-play announcer for high school sports on local cable TV systems, I've seen more field hockey than I had in the previous 30 years combined. And I've marveled at the changes -- and not just the fact that the kids don't wear kilts for uniforms anymore.
Field hockey is much more athletic and much faster than I remember it from the 1970s. Artificial turf contributes to that, of course, but there are just better athletes playing the sport. There are still too many silly whistles stopping play too often, but it's a far more interesting sport to watch when teams play it well -- and we're blessed to have some very good teams in our area.
It was during my announcing of two local games recently that I saw another aspect of how the game has changed -- the velocity of the shots by some of these very athletic girls. I won't mention their names here because, again, I don't want to associate them with an unfortunate tragedy. But I can recall two instances where I actually reacted with shock in my voice at the velocity of the ball as it left the players' sticks. One of those shots might have caused a similar injury to what the D-R girl suffered if the goalie hadn't seen it coming and simply dropped to the ground.
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Goggles aren't enough
protection in today's game. |
Even before the unfortunate recent circumstance, I found myself wondering why after all these years, field hockey athletes don't wear helmets and face masks. That ball is every bit as hard as a hockey puck, and female hockey players wear helmets and masks and much more body padding. While the rules of field hockey discourage lifted shots, they won't always prevent that one that gets away from a shooter and turns into a rocket hell-bent for destruction.
At the very least, I hope the MIAA will look at this incident and see the need for increased safety equipment. It's not simply a boy-vs.-girl thing, because there are girls that could easily shatter teeth with their shots. Had this been the case on Thursday, and a girl's shot caused the injury, everyone involved would have felt just as terrible about it -- but it wouldn't have become a national story because it wouldn't have fit the Fox News narrative.
As I said, it's not an ideal situation. There is truth to the physical differences in the sexes and how that translates to athletic competition. But at the same time, it is virtually impossible for the state to legislate in favor of discrimination. Smarter minds than mine will need to find the solution.
Another thing that irritated me is that the conservative pundits are also trying to use this situation to further their GOP-approved vilification of transgender athletes, even though there's no hint whatsoever that a transgender athlete was involved.
The morning show "Fox and Friends" tried to rope Bill Runey into that morass this morning when they had him on as a guest to discuss the accident and his player's thoughtful response to the MIAA. Runey is well-schooled in media matters, and he wasn't duped into playing along with the interviewer's prodding, but this was one of those very irritating times that reminded me that Fox News is only in the "news" business to seize upon the ignorance and gullibility of a certain segment of America and turn it into frenzied support for the ultra-conservative agenda.
I've probably said or done my share of dumb things in my lifetime, and maybe it took me the full 70 years to reach a certain level of enlightenment. But I do know I have learned to try to put myself into the shoes of others before I pass judgment upon anyone or anything. And that's why it absolutely infuriates me that transgender individuals have become, at least in the latest conservative manifesto, the new enemy. I won't even repeat the accusations and insinuations that are voiced every day in conservative media because I find them reprehensible and totally in opposition to the Constitution's promise of equality for all Americans, emphasis upon "all."
I can't claim to have personal experience in transgender matters. All I can do is think about what it means at the most elemental level -- especially to the young man or woman that has, or is considering, transitioning to a different gender. What has that person experienced? What is it like to know that your heart and soul is telling you that you are actually something you're not? What kind of personal anguish has it caused to bring one to the ultimate decision of transition? And what about the emotions that have been experienced by other family members?
I can't answer those questions. I can only listen to those that have answered them, if they care to share. Otherwise, I don't ask questions about something that's not my business. I'd like to think that I assess individuals at face value, and that doesn't include X-rays of their innards.
Years ago, I covered an athlete that played basketball locally. A biological female, she played quite well and attained her share of accolades, and then went on to college and I lost touch with her. Many years later, I got a letter at my office from someone with the same last name and a male first name. I opened the envelope and read the letter -- it was from that athlete, who had transitioned from female to male and became a writer. He sent along a copy of a story he wrote about his personal conflicts as a younger person and why he transitioned, and included in the story was a mention of thanks to me for having treated him with respect and a sense of equality when he was female, even though it was not fashionable at the time for sportswriters to treat female athletes as equals to their male counterparts.
I was touched. I was happy this person understood my intention to support and encourage equal treatment of female athletes at the time when it was more personal and meaningful for him. And I was also happy that he was going forward in life within a vessel that felt right for him.
I suspect that 99 times out of 100, I could stand next to a transgender person and have no clue about his or her transitioning or what led that individual to follow that path. As I said, it's really none of my business. And I believe above all else that it's not the business of our government to be peering into the undershorts of anyone to see what reproductive equipment exists within before they're allowed to play sports, go to the bathroom, or anything that any other American can do without interference.
And even if I do know, so what? Does it affect me in the slightest? No. Who am I to pass judgment upon individuals that have become or are becoming the persons they believe they were intended to be? They deserve to be able to pursue personal happiness, just as I am, and not to face persecution.
The Declaration of Independence states, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." We're 247 years into this quest, and still, some believe that not all Americans are due these rights, whether because of gender, race, national origin, religious beliefs or sexual identity.
I really wish I understood why. I wish others would as well.
