Trey Smith
It's not surprising to me that the following news item came from the State of Arizona!
An Arizona high school forfeited a shot at a state baseball championship on Thursday rather than compete against an opponent that had a 15-year-old girl on its team, an official from the rival school said.Tell me exactly how refusing to play a game of baseball against a team that has a female member is showing "profound respect" for her? Call me crazy, but it seems to be sending the opposite message. In fact, the message I hear is that the folks from Our Lady of Sorrows are stating very clearly that they don't think girls should be playing baseball!
Our Lady of Sorrows Academy in Phoenix had been due to play Mesa Preparatory Academy in the Arizona Charter Athletic Association state championship.
But the team pulled out rather than face the Mesa squad, which fielded 15-year-old Paige Sultzbach at second base, Mesa Preparatory Academy headmaster Robert Wagner said.
"They wouldn't play the game as long as we had a girl on the team who was on the field. It violates their policy about boys playing against girls," Wagner told Reuters.
"It's just unfortunate that our kids who are excited about playing don't have the opportunity," he added.
Reuters was unable to reach Our Lady of Sorrows for comment. But Fox News reported an official at the school as saying it had no option but to forfeit the game.
"Teaching our boys to treat ladies with deference, we choose not to place them in an athletic competition where proper boundaries can only be respected with difficulty," Fox reported the official as saying in a statement.
"Our school aims to instill in our boys a profound respect for women and girls," it added.
As an aside, I'm wondering if the school's namesake was sorrowful because she was told she couldn't play baseball either!
Seriously?
ReplyDeleteBoys and girls have separate sports leagues for a reason. They don't have the same athletic abilities, thats not my opinion, thats fact. A boy team vs a girl team would be unfair. The team probably chose not to compete because they thought it wouldn't be fair, granted they should have said something first. I don't see why a girls baseball team couldn't be formed if they could find 9 players.
This isn't about a boys team vs a girls team. It's about one team that is ALL male with the exception of the second baseman. Since she made the team and earned the right to start at second base, she must be fairly good.
DeleteHow could it not be fair? These two teams were to meet in the state championship! It seems more than obvious that a female second baseman didn't hold her team back. Who knows! She might be one of the team's stars.
As a child, I remember that among the kids of the neighborhood, both girls and boys played on the same teams. In school, it was forbidden at that time. Kids often think differently than adults about this; if you need an extra player to fill out your team, anyone will do.
ReplyDeleteThe rules for intersex team sports today probably are set by either the individual school system or even maybe the state, if we are talking about public schools. Private schools set their own rules. My local public system says that if there is not a comparable team sport for the girls, an individual girl has a right to try out for a traditionally boy's sports team. I know of a girl who played football in middle school with the boys, as there was no girl's football available. I agree with Trey that this is about an individual girl who was able to make the team, and she earned the right to be a part of that team. If private schools like Our Lady of Sorrows don't wish to play with systems that allow mixed-sex teams, then those private schools should form their own league. Some conservative Christian schools do this already.
KaiWen: Even within boys sports, things are not always equal. A friend's nephew played football in middle school and because he was already huge-over 6 feet tall and heavy-he was forbidden to tackle, as there were still many boys on the small size and it would have been quite dangerous for them. So rules can sometimes be bent according to athletic abilities, not just for the sex of the players.