As fans in rainbow Lions gear cheered on the boys’ basketball team at Pride Night on February 7, Lakeside’s transgender athletes faced an uncertain future.
Two days prior to the school’s annual celebration of LGBTQ+ student-athletes, President Trump signed an executive order entitled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” threatening to withhold funding from schools that allow transgender women to compete on women’s teams. The NCAA quickly changed its policy to comply with the order.
The Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA) — which governs high school sports throughout the state — has not yet specified how it will respond.
For many years, the association has allowed students to compete based on “gender identity” or “gender most consistently expressed.” However, last year, after a transgender girl won the Washington girls’ 2A 400-meter track championship, some school districts proposed amendments to the association’s policy. One proposal would limit participation in girls’ sports to biological females, permitting transgender girls to compete in a renamed boys’ category called “Boys/Open,” while another would restrict both boys’ and girls’ categories to biological males and females and create a third “open division” for all interested students. Transgender students who have “undertaken medical changes” would be required to play in this division.
The WIAA’s Representative Assembly will vote on the amendments in April. District 2, which includes the Metro and KingCo Leagues, is allocated the most votes due to its size. Sixty percent of the assembly must approve for an amendment to pass, according to the WIAA’s website.
The executive order is currently being challenged in court and the amendments could also face legal challenges if passed.
As Lakeside awaits the WIAA’s response to the executive order and the results of next month’s vote, Tatler polled the student body and spoke with several students and Director of Athletics Chris Hartley.
The poll indicated that students are divided on the issue: Approximately 53% of 58 respondents believe transgender girls should be allowed to play girls’ sports, 33% believe they should not, and the rest did not express a clear opinion. A January 2024 New York Times and Ipsos poll found that nearly 80% of Americans oppose transgender women competing in women’s sports.
One freshman respondent wrote, “Biological men have a CLEAR athletic advantage and its not fair to have a biological male play with [a] biological female.”
Kyle F. ’25, a transgender boy who helped run Pride Night as a member of Lakeside’s LGBTQ+ alliance GLOW, said that preventing transgender girls from playing girls’ high school sports is “ridiculous” and “cruel.” Though he acknowledged there are physical differences between people assigned male and female at birth, saying that allowing transgender athletes to play at collegiate or professional levels “gets a little bit more complicated” because some people are making a living off their sport, he believes all high school students should be able to play a sport for fun on the team they choose.
“ High school activities are for fun,” he said. “ We’re just kind of playing to have fun. We’re high school students, we can sort of do whatever we want. And if we want to play this sport, then we can, and nobody should be barred from doing that.”
Kyle, who plays lacrosse, added that an “open division” would be infeasible due to the small number of transgender athletes.
“ You can’t field an entire team full of transgender athletes because there aren’t that many of them” who want to play any given sport, he said. “ Especially at a private high school when we have so few people, I am the only one. And I’m not upset about that, but I can’t very well play on my own lacrosse team.”
WIAA Executive Director Mick Hoffman told The Seattle Times the association is “currently aware of five transgender student athletes in the state…though it is possible there are more.” A section labeled “Cons” under the amendment states that “inviting athletes from across state lines to mitigate player counts is encouraged to accommodate participation of athletes in the open division.”
Lia S. ’25, a transgender girl, said playing on a girls’ team is important to fitting in socially. She discussed her experience playing ultimate frisbee, which is governed by DiscNW rather than the WIAA and will remain welcoming to transgender athletes, according to the organization’s February 10 statement.
“Trans women are not focused on, ‘How am I going to transition and dominate the women’s category?’” she said. “The foremost thing in their mind is how am I going to stay safe, and how am I going to fit in socially with the people around me… for me, that was a big part of my early transition socially — being able to find community within [ultimate frisbee], and play in this place that really affirmed who I was.”
As for the school’s stance, Mr. Hartley said he and every other Metro League athletic director voted “No” when the amendments were discussed in recent league meetings. He said he spoke with Dr. Bynum, Mr. Boccuzzi, and Ms. Abu Rahmeh about the amendments.
“This [voting no] aligns with our mission. This aligns with everything we talk about in terms of equity and inclusion and belonging,” he said.
Mr. Hartley said he finds it “appalling” that these amendments are on the ballot. He said “there’s no science behind” the notion that transgender girls have an athletic advantage and believes this idea results from “misinformation.”
“ I feel like people think that there’s this fixed amount of power that you can have, and when people think that that power might be taken away from them, they do things like this [propose the amendments],” he said. “It’s similar with, kind of, when the slaves were freed and white people worried that they were going to lose things because now there was competition.”
Ultimately, Mr. Hartley said he doesn’t know what Lakeside will do if the association bars transgender girls from competing in girls’ sports.
“I don’t have an answer for that. I don’t think we want to just say ‘Lakeside is done with athletics,’” he said. “And, I also would have a really hard time looking at a trans girl and saying to them, ‘You can’t play on this team.’ That doesn’t align with our mission, our core values.”
Going forward, Mr. Hartley said he “would welcome” opportunities to discuss the topic of transgender athletes and is open to hosting forums like a “town hall” if students are interested.
Both Kyle and Lia said they want to talk about this issue with other Lakesiders.
Kyle said “people shouldn’t be afraid to share their opinions,” emphasizing that discussing this issue differs from debating other topics related to transgender people.
“People are often hesitant to share opinions about issues like this for fear of ‘saying the wrong thing,’ but in cases where the topic isn’t literally whether or not I (or the queer/transgender community) deserve healthcare and basic human rights, it’s unreasonable and unproductive to not invite different points of view in conversations,” Kyle wrote. “This is about playing sports in high school, and though it’s an important issue to me and I have a strong opinion about it, it is not life or death.”
“So let’s talk about it honestly and openly,” he added.
