Column: Athletic team participation and happiness in adult life
Retired superintendent Curt Dubost.
– As I write this, I’m thinking about my personal history on teams, my career in school administration, and most recently, last Sunday, which I spent at a small charter school gym in South County watching one of my granddaughters compete in a sixth-grade girls basketball tournament from 8 am to noon.
A major post WWII study first found, and later studies have confirmed, that there is a strong positive correlation between participation on a team during adolescence and happiness later in life. As I recall, that first study surveyed tens of thousands of middle-aged adults across the Midwest with widely diverse backgrounds and asked one simple question, “Do you feel successful and are you happy?” All study participants first had to complete a questionnaire identifying how much education they had completed, their annual income, and a variety of other demographic factors.
By a wide margin, the one factor shared by adults who said they were “happy” and felt “successful” was not income, advanced degrees, nor any of the factors one might have guessed. Instead, the one life experience those who self-identified as “happy adults” most often shared was their participation on some kind of team or group in school or otherwise as they grew up. For many, it was athletic teams, but it could also have been Scouts, the debate team, a service club, band, drama, or any other group activity. Later studies similarly found significantly higher self-esteem in adults who had been on teams.
I suspect most of us remember best and have the most lifelong memories and friendships with our former teammates. In my case, it is upsetting Coronado High School to win the Metro League championship in tennis my senior year, the only league title my high school won. In college, I remember most vividly my fraternity brothers on the flag football team beating an arch rival. All of my lifelong friends are from those two teams.
These studies were cited prominently in 1972 in the crafting of Title IX, which mandated that girls be afforded an equal opportunity to play sports just like boys. Before this mandate it was generally accepted that girls took home ec and boys took shop classes. School team sports were reserved almost exclusively for boys. Girls participated mostly in the band/drill team or, could try out to be a cheerleader.
Girls athletic teams were very limited as the law went into effect, and not surprisingly the quality of the girls’ play initially was at times embarrassing. I remember watching college sports like Girls Basketball on TV and there were sparse crowds and few truly athletic players. Baskets at times were rare. Contrast that to high school and college girls sports and the WNBA now; Caitlin Clark is fortunate to have been born in 2002 not 1952.
Full compliance with the new regulations was difficult, especially at small schools with fewer students, and there definitely was a lack of financial support. In some cases, some boys’ sports were deleted in order to offer an equitable number of girls’ teams. I disagreed with cutting any boys’ sports in the name of equity, but on balance, the law was a good idea, and I believe one of the very best mandates related to schools the federal government ever enacted.
Fast forward fifty years.
During my tenure as Paso Superintendent, you may recall that LGBTQ rights became a huge issue nationally and at the state and local levels. We faced overtly hateful and despicable acts against LGBTQ students on our campuses. Some made national news. As I defended the rights of all students to attend school without fear of discrimination and bullying, I disappointed many by supporting most of the law but strongly condemning three of the provisions of the California legislation, passed in 2014. These required all students be allowed to participate in sports and use restroom facilities consistent with their preferred gender identity and sexual expression. My objections were to “Trans” kids’ participation on girls’ sports teams, the placement of a feminine hygiene products dispenser in at least one male restroom at every high school, and placing the decision for notifying parents of a student’s request to change their preferred sexual identity on school counselors.
I contend these three provisions seriously hurt, not help, the cause of LGBTQ rights.
Requiring a feminine hygiene product dispenser in at least one high school boys’ restroom is simply absurd, and the fact that it is the law has caused an overall erosion of public support for LGBTQ rights and fueled the critics. I recall my sister-in-law from Oregon calling me to confirm that it was an unfounded rumor made up by the far right to ridicule California. She was astounded by my answer. The fact that it is law makes other ridiculous claims that are not true seem as if they could be. Surely any transitioning kid who legitimately needs a tampon can find another way to obtain one than in a high school boys’ restroom.
Having school personnel be forced not to tell parents of their child’s preferred pronouns or desire to transition without the student’s permission is equally indefensible. School personnel are mandated reporters of any suspected child abuse. Surely, if they honestly believe notifying the student’s parents would endanger the minor, they must refer the case to Child Welfare Services (formerly known as Child Protective Services), where the staff is presumably trained to handle such concerns. Leaving it to school personnel inevitably leads to travesties like the Spreckles case just north of here, in which school personnel made egregious errors in judgment, resulting in an out-of-court settlement. My direction to the counselors was to help any student who was changing their pronouns talk to their parents, not circumvent them.
As an aside, I read several of the LGBTQ books that conservatives insisted be banned from the school library. In each, I read the life stories of young authors who advised peers contemplating transition to give their parents the benefit of the doubt and involve them, stating parents are almost always loving and helpful, not hurtful. Having those books available in the library and in a special section where students don’t just “stumble upon” them is something I completely support. Banning of any books is the slipperiest of slopes.
Perhaps the most problematic of the 2014 law’s provisions is the one currently most in the news. As I recall, one of the opponents of the legislation prophetically questioned what would happen if an athlete with a particularly masculine body type were to decide to switch from competing as a male to as a female. Most infamously, this became a national issue in 2022 with Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas. Lia, formerly William Thomas, had competed collegiately as a male and at over six feet in height, with an athletic masculine physique, had begun taking hormones in 2019. As a female, she then won numerous titles by wide margins.
Supporters portray her as a heroic figure, almost like a Rosa Parks. More recent cases involved a trans San Jose State Volleyball player whose male physique was not only a competitive advantage but a potential danger to opposing players in a contact sport. Also problematic is the direction that transitioning athletes be allowed to dress in the locker room of their preference, while other students who may be made uncomfortable by their presence are the ones who may choose to dress in another private area.
As I recall, the NCAA initially tried to rule that an athlete who had competed as a boy could not subsequently identify and compete as female. Requirements that any trans student had to have been in hormonal therapy for at least three years prior to the change were also attempted. Another proposal was that all students must declare at puberty which gender they claimed for athletic eligibility and could not subsequently change. All such restrictions were successfully challenged and determined to violate the Title IX requirements.
Apparently lost in the rulings were the rights and opportunities for participation in athletics of the female students the law was originally intended to protect.
As a result of some disgusting acts of discrimination against LGBTQ students at Paso High (such as the stolen rainbow flag defecation incident), the ACLU presented an evening forum where attorneys outlined the requirements of the 2014 legislation, mostly refuting the arguments or minimizing the points I’ve made above. The lead attorney advised the audience that if they were debating any anyone who wouldn’t listen to just say that’s the law and walk away. “Don’t waste your time on homophobes” was the clear message.
After the formal presentation, I introduced myself to the lead ACLU attorney and shared my concerns, particularly about athletic participation of trans kids on girls’ teams. I shared that my mother and her partner had been huge supporters of girls’ athletics. The ACLU attorney said she and her wife had just been to the World Cup for Women’s Soccer and were also huge supporters of Title IX. She added that it was a non-issue as there were so few cases.
I responded that I have two granddaughters who play basketball, and if either were to be displaced or injured by an athlete who had previously competed as a boy, I was not going to be OK with that at all. I added that I tried not to permit to happen to any kids what I wouldn’t allow for my own. She then followed her previous advice and said, “It’s the law, Mr. Superintendent,” and walked away.
How can we protect the rights of both female athletes and trans kids? Contact your legislators and reform the law. Period. Don’t ask your school board though to violate the law or make legislation. That is not their job, and to do so simply leaves the district open to expensive, probably successful claims and likely a loss of liability coverage. Let’s avoid political grandstanding on both sides and stay focused on the district’s primary goal of more kids learning to read, mastering mathematics, and being actively involved in school.
The issue of trans student participation in girls’ sports, though, isn’t as simple as some have opined. I cannot agree, for example, with those who say God made two genders, male and female, and that’s it. End of discussion. The facts, however, are that depending on what criteria are used, as many as 1.7 % of live births are of uncertain gender when born. Such babies are called Intersex, often with external genitals that are neither clearly male nor female.
The number of such births who are clearly intersex according to other studies may be as few in one in 4500, but infants of uncertain gender are born, and presumably God made them as well as all the other children; hence, they are not “mistakes.” They are children. If their uncertain gender had been known to the parents early in the pregnancy, should they have been encouraged to abort them?
If 1.7% is an accurate number, then a school of two thousand students like Paso High would statistically expect to have as many as thirty or more such students in attendance each year. If it is only 1 in 4500, that still means there are likely one or more kids who were born as intersex currently in the district.
In my usual attempt to find a compromise (and in the process inevitably it seems infuriate both sides), I propose the following:
First, any female should be eligible to compete on either women’s or men’s teams. I remember at Templeton, as we tried to field teams in more sports as we grew, our star forward on the “men’s” soccer team was Lacy Martin, and Cambri Horton could have played football and probably would have been all league. This is nothing new.
Athletes who have competed on any secondary school team as boys, but are transitioning to female, on the other hand, may participate only on boys’ teams. They are not excluded from eligibility for team participation, just not as girls. Thus, under no circumstances do I think a Lia Thomas should be allowed to participate as a woman. I will never be OK in any way if my granddaughter’s spot on her school team is taken by someone currently competing as a boy, or if she is injured competing against a physically superior trans kid. I also do not want them undressing in the same locker room for a sport like swimming, where one must totally strip. (In many other sports, and in PE, showering is not required).
The vast majority though of the relatively few boys transitioning to be girls with whom I have been associated are not at all athletes like Lia Thomas. They are more like the following which is a composite of several intersex kids I’ve known. I’ll call my fictional kid “Jimmy,” after a boy with whom I went to junior high in the 1960s.
In that era, those of you in your seventies like me will recall starting in junior high or seventh grade, the state paid for towel service, which allowed the school to insist that all students, regardless of maturity, be required to shower in PE daily. We all had to totally disrobe in front of others and change into a gym uniform including a jock strap we were required to wear. After class we were herded into huge shower rooms, often with much older, more mature boys. I was two years younger than most of my classmates and hadn’t reached puberty. There were a handful of us who often endured snapping towels, demands to see between our legs to prove we were guys and the like. It was a totally miserable, humiliating experience.
Jimmy though was by far the most bullied. He dressed and cut his hair so that his gender was not clear. In addition to being extremely effeminate he was a bit overweight and had no visible or external genitalia, as was pointed out in the shower by the bullies. Rumor had it his father had wanted a boy and was insistent Jimmy would be his son not his daughter.
There was no way Jimmy could ever have made a competitive sports team and with his self esteem so low he had virtually no friends and zero self confidence. I am embarrassed to admit that I was relieved to have someone even more immature and undeveloped than I to be the target of the bullies. I stayed clear of him lest I be called a degrading slur.
I bring up Jimmy because I hope if he were in school here now, changed his gender to become Jenny, and found the courage to try out for girls sports that we could find a way to distinguish between him and Lia Thomas. Let’s allow the “Jimmies” try out for and, if earned, be on a girls’ team. We’ve all seen school basketball teams where kids who aren’t traditional athletes are, for various reason,s including necessity be on teams and sometimes even be heroes.
Remember Ollie, the skinny little team manager who had to fill in when they were out of players and made the winning free throws in “Hoosiers?”
– Former Paso Robles Joint Unified School District Superintendent Curt Dubost
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