On Sept. 5, a cross country athlete and a student at Camas High in Washington State finished 76th in a JV cross country race. On Sept. 29, he finished first in a varsity race in a meet against Union High school.
Did he recover from an injury? Train himself back into shape? No. Midway through the season, he decided he was going to start running as a girl.
Under the rules of the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA), which governs high school sports in the state, such a switch is permitted. This is what allowed the trans athlete to also finish second among 195 girls in a Sept. 26 race in Portland.
But as you might imagine, not everybody competing against the trans athlete is on board with all this. Last month, two girls and a father decided to protest — which ultimately led to the dad being served a criminal trespass notice.
Sierra Retzlaff and Charlie Garrett are cross country runners for Skyview High in Vancouver, WA. A week before their meet against Camas, the two girls found out that they would be racing against a boy. After some discussion, they decided that they were going to make a statement. How? By walking up to the starting line with body paint reading “keep women in women’s sports” … and walking off once the race began.
This prompted mixed reactions. Retzlaff said that she has received a lot of support but has also had friends that started ignoring her. One man that absolutely had her back, however, was her father — Joel Retzlaff.
Retzlaff and his wife brought two signs to the Sept. 15 meet. The first read: “It will never be OK for a XY to steal an opportunity from a XX.”
The second read: “Please only XX competing with XX, XY competing with XY. Keep it fair.”
But WIAA has a no-signage rule (aside from team banners), so Camas’ athletic director Stephen Baranowski approached Retzlaff and asked him to leave. Retzlaff asked why, and Baranowski explained to him it was because of the signage. Retzlaff agreed to take the signs down, but he still wanted to make his voice heard. So as he walked back to his car after Sierra’s race, he held up his sign and chanted “Keep boys out of girls sports!” And after he got into his car, he drove by the venue, honked his horn and repeated the same chant while his friend held the signs out the window.
The consequence? A criminal trespass notice that keeps Retzlaff off Camas school district properties for the next year.
That may seem like an emotional reaction from the Camas school district, but its superintendent, John Anzalone, insists it wasn’t. It was relayed to him that Retzlaff drove through a “barrier” — essentially an area closed off by construction tape — and that the trespass notice was in the interest of safety. Retzlaff said that Anzalone’s perspective is “valid,” but it doesn’t sound like he has any regrets.
In his mind, he was standing up for girls in a way that most parents didn’t.
Retzlaff’s response to critics? “I would beg to ask them where all the adults are that know the difference between a boy and a girl and why they’re letting this happen.”
Garrett, one of the students who walked off, said the trans athlete’s mother followed her around and recorded her for much of the meet. Apparently, she didn’t stand down when Garrett’s mother, Emily Sadowski, confronted her and told her to stop filming.
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But like Joel, Charlie isn’t second-guessing her decision to stand up for girls
“I thought it was more important to show how this is affecting me and all the girls in our district,” said Garrett, adding that she doesn’t have any hate toward the trans athlete. “It comes down to biology and the spots being taken away from Sierra, me and all the girls.”
On Nov. 3, Washington voters will decide whether to ban biological boys from competing in K-12 girls’ sports through Initiative 638. It would be the first time the public passed a law enforcing such separation.
Perhaps Joel Retzlaff crossed a line — figuratively and literally — when he drove through that tape. But he’d argue a far more consequential line had already been crossed.
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