US NewsTrack, soccer, basketball and more: The trans athlete scandals that rocked high school sports this year, from NY to CaliforniaBy Rikki SchlottPublishedJune 3, 2025, 6:00 a.m. ET

Trans athletes have been dominating high school girls’ sports in the US — and dominating the news, with more than a dozen cases making headlines this school year.

Over the weekend, biologically male athletes placed in track and field championships in Oregon, Washington and California, despite President Trump’s February executive order banning trans

athletes in women’s sports.

by female athletes, signed an executive order in February banning transgender athletes from women’s sports. AP

“THIS IS NOT FAIR, AND TOTALLY DEMEANING TO WOMEN AND GIRLS,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on May 27. “Please be hereby advised that large scale Federal Funding will be held back, maybe

permanently, if the Executive Order on this subject matter is not totally adhered to.”

A February poll from Pew found that 66% of Americans believe they should compete according to their birth sex — up from 58% in 2022.

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Here are the cases that have most shaken up the high school sports world during the 2024-25 school year.

Trans athlete AB Hernandez, 16, took first place in the girls’ high and triple jump events at California’s high school championship Saturday and placed second in the long

jump.

Hernandez shared the top podium spot with the biologically female athlete who finished “second,” thanks to a change to the California Interscholastic Federation rules — made last week after

Trump publicly criticized the state for allowing trans athletes to continue to compete.

In May, Reese Hogan, the 16-year-old who came in second to Hernandez in the triple jump at the CIF Southern Section Finals, momentarily posed for photos at the top of the podium after

Hernandez climbed off — drawing cheers from the crowd.

Interscholastic Federation competition, in which Hernandez took part, were changed last week after President Trump publicly criticized the state for allowing trans athletes to continue to

compete. APShirley, NY

A 6-foot-tall, 14-year-old freshman trans athlete stirred controversy by joining the varsity track team at William Floyd High School on Long Island in March, despite not being on hormone

replacement treatment. 

A group of female student athletes told the South Shore Press they would feel uncomfortable if they had to share a locker room with a biologically male competitor.

At Saturday’s state track championship in Eugene, Oregon, two female athletes — third- and fourth-place champions Alexa Anderson and Reese Eckard, both seniors — refused to stand on the

podium with Lia Rose, a trans athlete who took fifth place. Rose, also a senior, competed as a male for Ida B. Wells High School last year.

the runner-up in Portland’s 400M championship in February. @ReduxxMag/X

And Ada Gallagher, a transgender junior at McDaniel High School, finished more than seven seconds ahead of the runner-up in the 400M Portland Interscholastic League meet and also won the

200M race in February.

That same day Veronica Garcia, a transgender 17-year-old representing Mount Tahoma High School in Tacoma, Washington, won the class 2A 400-meter dash state title for the second consecutive

time. 

Garcia told the Seattle Times that boos from the crowd acted as fuel: “It made me angry, but not angry as in, I wanted to give up, but angry as in, I’m going to push … I hope they get a

life.”

In October 2024, female soccer players at Bishop Brady Catholic High School pulled out of a game against Kearsarge Regional High School in protest over a transgender competitor.

Washington

In February, a basketball game between Tumwater and Shelton high schools triggered a civil rights complaint over a transgender player on Shelton’s team.

“Anyone that invades my privacy and protection as a girl, that is not okay,” Frances Saudt, the 15-year-old female athlete who filed the complaint, told a local news outlet.

Francisco, California

A transgender basketball player scored 29 points for San Francisco Waldorf High School’s girls team in January — leading to a 59-33 win over Jewish Community High School.

player for Waldorf High School scored 29 points in one game. @bourne_beth2345 / X

When that athlete, whose name has not been made public, missed a playoff game in February following Trump’s executive order, Waldorf’s team lost by 26 points.

Transgender athlete Becky Pepper-Jackson, a freshman at Bridgeport High School in Bridgeport, West Virginia, was the first transgender athlete to compete in her state’s track championships

in May.

Pepper-Jackson won bronze in the Class AAA girls discus event, securing a spot on the medal podium.

At the beginning of the school year, a federal judge temporarily overruled former New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu’s ban — barring trans athletes in grades 5 through 12 from teams that align

with their chosen gender identity — so that soccer player Parker Tirrell, now 16, could participate on Plymouth Regional High School’s team by emergency order.

to play on her high school’s soccer team, thanks to an emergency order. AP

Tirrell and 15-year-old tennis player Iris Turmelle, who is also trans and attends Pembroke Academy, became the first student athletes to challenge Trump’s order in March, expanding on a

lawsuit they had filed against their state.

In May, reigning state softball champions Rogers High School were defeated by Champlin Park High School, after their transgender pitcher threw 14 shutout innings.

A female track co-captain at Martin Luther King High School alleged that she lost her varsity spot to a transgender athlete who transferred to the school.

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