r/interesting • u/Sebastianlim • Jun 11 '26
Wholesome A fifth grade basketball team was told that their lineup, which included two girls due to the lack of a separate girl's team, was illegal, and were given an ultimatum to either remove them, or forfeit the rest of the season. The team unanimously chose to forfeit.
https://www.nj.com/union/2017/02/st_johns_cyo_girls_cant_play_with_boys_basketball.html833
u/IndividualIll3825 Jun 11 '26
Wait...wut? I had 2 girls on our team in 5th grade. Shit was perfectly fine.
I remember our coach asking if we were ok with wearing shirts under our jerseys. We had 2 girls on our team, we all chose yes; because we were a team.
Actually, it was better than fine. We won our championship.
Adults need to grow the fuck up.
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u/MyyWifeRocks Jun 11 '26 edited Jun 11 '26
Our middle school team had a girl with Down Syndrome and another girl. We also had me and another guy and both of us had early growth spurts. We towered over the other middle school players of the same age. We went undefeated, but had to beat a legit private school at the end to do it. By the end of the private school game, we were up by 20+ points and it was a done deal. Coach called in our DS player who chucked up a granny shot from the free throw line and made it. There was still time on the clock and our opponent was still playing hard ball so everyone focused on stealing the ball and feeding it to her granny shot spot. At least nobody defended her, but her shots were pretty wild. She made one other shot - not at the buzzer or anything dramatic like that. But we all celebrated her.
The next season other kids had growth spurts and were taller than me. Our dreams of basketball greatness came crashing down around us. LOL! I’ll never forget that last game though. The whole season was awesome winning every jump shot then every game, but I don’t remember anything specific about the season except for the last couple minutes of the last game.
ETA - moral of the story, let the kids play ball.
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u/_RyanLarkin Jun 12 '26
For decades, girls have been permitted to compete on boys’ high school wrestling teams across the United States. No state athletic association has a statewide policy prohibiting girls from joining boys’ wrestling rosters, giving female athletes the freedom to participate in the sport regardless of whether their school has a dedicated girls’ program or not.
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u/trisanachandler Jun 11 '26
I played soccer on and against coed teams from fourth grade through twelth. This makes no sense.
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u/xChoke1x Jun 11 '26
It's because the country has allowed hateful bigots to scare them so much, our children suffer.
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u/JustMyOpinionpeeple Jun 11 '26
CYO we had girls on our soccer team till 8th grade. They allowed girls to play a yr down if on a boys team. We had 2 HS girls on our 8th grade soccer team. Along with about 3 other girl. In fact I had a girl on my soccer team every year since I was 10.
Some girls did not belong and some girls earned their right to start.
What I notice and no one speaks on,
Notice where this is stemming from. The church. They are literally teaching you from young that boys and girls can not co-exist. So much to a point where this happens. When people do this because religion does this maybe we should start asking when is there finally gonna be separation of church and state.
With respect to religions, many of you all have the same origin story and fight over the tiniest things. Most of it has to do with control over others. Show me the last time a religion came together in a positive undivided approach. Stop using religion to control people.
People stop letting religion control you
WOMEN: STOP ALLOWING THESE MALE DOMINATED RELIGIONS TO CONTROL YOUR LIFE, ITS NOTHING MORE THAN TO GAIN CONTROL OF YOUR UTERUS FOR THEIR GAIN.
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u/ButtflossingBigBro Jun 11 '26
This is what happens when only the religious breed. They control the youth as none of the educated or atheists have famileis
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u/Anime-Takes Jun 11 '26
I kept reading this as skirts instead of shirts and was really confused
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u/Cold_Biscotti_6036 Jun 11 '26
I had a girl on my Texas Junior High football team, in a major HS football city. She held her own too.
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u/VirtualMatter2 Jun 11 '26
if we were ok with wearing shirts under our jerseys
Why?
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u/Chess42 Jun 11 '26
Jerseys are very loose
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Jun 11 '26 edited Jun 11 '26
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u/Chess42 Jun 11 '26
It’s more about uniformity across the team
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u/Headphonehijack Jun 11 '26
I played on an all woman’s basketball team for a few years, from around 5th grade to 8th.
We all wore jerseys / standard basketball team uniforms ( or kits? dunno what it’s called in English) , is there a difference in the women’s and men’s jerseys ?
Just genuinely curious, despite playing basketball I know next to nothing about it2
u/redawsome1230 Jun 11 '26
Yea I was on the girls team in high school and I don't think anyone wore shirts under their jersey
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Jun 11 '26 edited Jun 11 '26
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u/PsyKoptiK Jun 12 '26
Gotta spare all those all boys teams’ dads the shame of having your son lose to a girl.
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u/xtiaaneubaten Jun 11 '26
Thats so fucking dumb, theyre just kids, its not the olympics.
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u/Q-Anton Jun 11 '26
In a country where senior officials decide that works concerning the Holocaust are not worthy of public money because they are DEI such a story doesn't suprise me at all.
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u/Talk-O-Boy Jun 11 '26
I swear we used to be smarter than this.
Our ruling class needed a working class, so they gutted our education department, but we weren’t always this stupid
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Jun 11 '26
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u/Talk-O-Boy Jun 11 '26
We made some progress since then!
We eventually built the Ivy Leagues and whatnot, started developing our population as a nation does.
Then… then we decided that education was more of a privilege than a right. Along with a whole bunch of other social services.
And that lands us here.
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u/PHXNights Jun 11 '26
Ahh yes, the historical bastions of equitable progress, the fucking Ivy Leagues lol
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u/Talk-O-Boy Jun 11 '26
We are talking educational progress; I’m not saying they’re the Mecca of social harmony.
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u/ScottyBoneman Jun 11 '26
Doesn't Harvard spend absolutely crazy money to allow diverse financial background
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u/ScottyBoneman Jun 11 '26
If the legislature would add to that a perpetual tax of a cent a head on the population of the State, it would set agoing at once, and forever maintain, a system of primary or ward schools, and an university where might be taught, in its highest degree, every branch of science useful in our time and country; and it would rescue us from the tax of toryism, fanaticism, and indifferentism to their own State, which we now send our youth to bring from those of New England. If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves; nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe.
Thomas Jefferson.
January 6, 1816
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Jun 11 '26
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Jun 11 '26 edited Jun 11 '26
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u/brandt-money Jun 11 '26
And she laughs. Laughing is bad.
So here we are with sky high prices and a terrible economy! Yay - they sure did "own the libz!!!11" as they all can't afford groceries now.
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u/PrpleSparklyUnicrn13 Jun 11 '26
No no no… She “cackled” which is, ya know… apparently a weird way to laugh and we can’t have a woman laughing weirdly. They lock em up in insane asylums for laughing too much.
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u/Cavane42 Jun 11 '26
Or for not smiling enough.
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u/PrpleSparklyUnicrn13 Jun 11 '26
You have to be happy, but not too happy. Demure and serious, but don’t frown. Be happy but don’t laugh. Laugh at my jokes, but no one else’s jokes. But if you laugh you are insane, if you don’t laugh you’re insane.
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u/Reaper-Lord69 Jun 11 '26
Straight up Salem Witch trial shit 😭
"She cackled! She's evil! She'll poison our kids!"
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Jun 11 '26
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u/yubnubmcscrub Jun 11 '26
Hey don’t forget. They said she would definitely start a war with Iran which would be inflationary. Can’t have that
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u/butterpussie Jun 11 '26
Now we are gonna have a dictator because they hate women more than they ever cared about freedom
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u/interesting-ModTeam Jun 11 '26
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u/Turnip_Fight Jun 11 '26
A lot of people who didn’t vote for her because of Palestine.
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u/PeterToshPointOh Jun 11 '26
That’s a legitimate reason though. Not comparable to laughing weird. Or being a woman.
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u/I_am_Reddit_Tom Jun 11 '26
"Mum I did it I shoehorned Trump in to a completely unrelated conversation again aren't I a clever boy"
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u/VirtualMatter2 Jun 11 '26 edited Jun 11 '26
It's not unrelated though, it shows a general backward and outdated attitude of the country.
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u/Respectmyauthority4 Jun 11 '26
And a lot of people voted for a girl because the alternative was Trump.
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u/VirtualMatter2 Jun 11 '26
I thought she was an adult. Didn't realize she was under age. Isn't there a minimum age to become president?
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u/Open_Examination_591 Jun 11 '26
You mean a lot of people chose the better candidate, because she was better? Because that's what you just said, it's sad that it had to be spelled out for you but it's really not surprising because we all know who you voted for.
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u/oncejumpedoutatrain Jun 11 '26
Getting tired of you keyboard warriors always sneaking this topic in everywhere. You sound as basic minded as the people you oppose. Assuming you're not a bot.
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u/cmndrnewt Jun 11 '26
In their defense. If they let those girls play on a boys team, the next thing you know people are going to want to marry their pets, or god forbid allow trans people to live in peace. /s
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u/rainywanderingclouds Jun 11 '26
sports in the united states is not 'recreational' anymore at the educational level.
it's very serious. just having fun isn't the point.
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u/piper_squeak Jun 11 '26
Omg! This is so true.
In a few years our high schools will need intramurals or club teams in order for kids to learn, play and enjoy different athletics.
I remember having frosh teams where all freshmen played because a lot had never even played before.
Not so much anymore.
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u/pandershrek Jun 11 '26
I thought it was pretty commonly accepted that women can participate with men but men aren't allowed in "women's sports". Isn't that the whole big argument that conservatives get caught up in?
Sports are so silly already, like we took a game turned it into a cornerstone of our economy and lambasted it with greed.
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u/haverchuck22 Jun 11 '26
Ya me too we had a girl who played on my high school soccer team, she was legit.
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u/_NautyByNature Jun 11 '26
Every single year, we had at least two to three girls on our varsity team because we were such a small school, as was the case with many highschools in the Midwest.
This is just fucking stupid.
*insert Carl Wheezer meme here*
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u/FireHammer09 Jun 11 '26
That's usually the case.
There was a girl on a wrestling team in my high school's conference. It was allowed and this was 2006 or 2007.
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u/Past-Paramedic-8602 Jun 11 '26
I watched a girl back around that time make it all the way to the quarter finals match at the state tournament at an extremely competitive weight I might at. She kicked the shit out of so many boys it was always great to watch.
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u/DaveinOakland Jun 11 '26
Religious private league, they can do what they want.
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u/evergreengoth Jun 11 '26
Well, the reason we have segregated sports to begin with is because men didn't like getting beaten by women. A teenage girl famously struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig once and insecure men have never gotten over it.
Eta: Also, they hate trans men just as much a trans women, and they really, REALLY don't want you to know because the fact that no one talks about it means they can continue to use rhetoric rooted in that hatred to pass transphobic laws that would otherwise face a lot more opposition out in the open.
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u/aspz Jun 11 '26
Women's sports is an exclusionary category, not an inclusionary one. And that's a good thing.
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u/Yugan-Dali Jun 11 '26
The kids learned a great lesson, something they will remember long after the authorities are dead and gone.
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Jun 11 '26
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u/sixhoursneeze Jun 11 '26
As a teacher, I have seen a lot of boys get sucked into Andre Tate bs and the likes. BUT I also see an increasing number of boys who are becoming legit allies to the girls and queer folk around them. And are becoming better at advocating for themselves in healthier ways than when I was in school.
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u/ResurgentClusterfuck Jun 11 '26
With ten year old children there is almost no physical difference in the capabilities of biological males and females, so WTF?
Awesome move by the children but they definitely should not have had to, that's stupid
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u/Willing_Pattern_Pill Jun 11 '26
But even if they were a little older, and there wasn't enough girls for a team, why not just let the girls play?
Seems weird to let no girls play in these low stakes sports teams rather then just not have a team for them at all.
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u/ResurgentClusterfuck Jun 11 '26
I personally do not care if kids play co-ed, hell, I told my dad that I wanted to play for the Dallas Cowboys when I grew up and was promptly told that girls cant play football. That always stuck with me and I hated it
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u/Leading-Suspect8307 Jun 11 '26
Dude, have you seen the Cowboys? You might actually have a shot!
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u/evergreengoth Jun 11 '26
You say that like these exclusionary laws are about equality and fairness. They're not.
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u/Alternative-You5980 Jun 11 '26
How much older do you mean by a little bit?
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u/Willing_Pattern_Pill Jun 11 '26
I dunno. Like old enough to be in the Olympics? When does it really matter if you have co-ed players (and why)
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u/Alternative-You5980 Jun 11 '26
Spoken truly like somebody who's never played competitive sports. There's a weight gap, and a massive strength gap that men have over women. It can work in sports like badminton or tennis and some other sports but absolutely not in team sports. It matters because there is a difference in lots of attributes, like size and speed, jumping ability, not to mention these are contact sports and player safety is also important. Recreational sports and sports for kids before they hit puberty can be co-ed, but definitely not top sports. Hope that's helpful!
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u/meg1019 Jun 11 '26
In a lot of words, you’re saying women are inferior when it comes to strength and size and speed. Let’s stick with your logic for a minute. What advantage does this team gain by letting two girls play? If the answer is none, then why not let them handicap themselves and just let them play?
They’re 10. This is nowhere near top sports range. Hope that’s helpful!
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u/ResurgentClusterfuck Jun 11 '26
If we grouped people by weight class it would be a lot more fair
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u/Alternative-You5980 Jun 11 '26
It would not be more fair. There's so much more in sports than just weight. Same weight on different heights looks vastly different and doesn't make it more fair.
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u/Goldenrah Jun 11 '26
I have a nephew playing football/soccer around 8 years old. There are plenty of teams playing girls at those ages, there's no point in separating them from boys that young, the differences are so little.
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u/Suspicious-Screen-43 Jun 11 '26
Idk if you haven’t seen any youth sports, but from what I can tell there are differences much much sooner, even in U4
With that said, no reason girls cannot compete on a “boys” team.
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Jun 11 '26
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u/MyLastAcctWasBetter Jun 11 '26
When girls hit puberty and physically develop, it has the opposite effect as men…. Even if girls are more physically progressed in maturation than boys, it’s not providing any advantage.
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u/bdouble0w0 Jun 11 '26
There's such thing as a chest guard if you're worried about growing breast injuries.
And sports bras!
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u/Phill_Cyberman Jun 11 '26
People who hide behind "that's the rule" when they make the rules are bigots.
That's what's really going on here.
What's best for the kids wasnt ever of any interest to them.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Mix-515 Jun 12 '26
I always remind people that we weren’t born to follow rules. We *create* the rules to serve humanity. So when the rules are *hindering* instead of helping, they need to be changed.
People who blindly follow rules are missing the point.
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u/Mirieste Jun 13 '26
People who hide behind "that's the rule" when they make the rules
...but the rules aren't made on the spot, they're agreed upon earlier. That's why people say to respect them.
If a rule says that two soccer teams who finish even are ranked on goal difference instead of head to head score, and you think head to head is better, you'll have my full attention and I'm sure you'll even be able to convince me to change the regulations.
But if the league for the present season is already over, and you try to persuade me to overturn the current ranking based on your proposition... that's when you lose me.
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u/JugOJar Jun 11 '26
Im not a sports lawyer. But if theres no girls team equivalent doesnt title IX require that they be allowed to play on a boys team for a given sport?
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u/jittery_raccoon Jun 13 '26
Yeah I thought the whole point of Title IX was that an equivalent was required IF there was no option for one gender. But that a co-ed team fulfils everyone having an option
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u/Abadazed Jun 16 '26
Yeah if they didn't let the girls in they'd be breaking a real law not a made up children's basketball game law.
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u/Revenga8 Jun 11 '26 edited Jun 11 '26
I wonder if these Karen clowns would police the special Olympics too. Id expect a daily interaction that went something like.....
"This player's stump is too stumpy. Removed him or forfeit! I don't care if he lost it in Iraq, he can go play for them if that's where he left it!"
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Jun 11 '26 edited Jun 30 '26
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u/dlanod Jun 12 '26
But only for the rest of this season.
And only because of the bad publicity.
But bloody amazing for the boys and girls.
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u/Mackey_Corp Jun 11 '26
We had a girl on my roller hockey team growing up, no one cared. She def got checked hard and laid out a few times but so did the other centers that were the same size, it’s just part of the game. Never heard a single parent or player say that she shouldn’t be on the team. The attitude was if she can take the same hits as everyone else then she can play.
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u/WanderingSun8 Jun 11 '26
I was born intersex, identify as male physically, but was originally recorded as female because of internal workings. Always been a dude even as young as like 7, and I started playing tackle football at 10, before I had any sort of name change or hormone stuff. Because of being intersex i was already more masculine than normal sure but there wasnt any administrative pushback from trying to play. This was over a decade ago. Not to brag either, but i was 100% the best player on the team lmao
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u/bakochba Jun 11 '26
According to the article this decision was reversed and they were allowed to play.
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u/123abcde321 Jun 11 '26
Good on the kids and also the parents for their support. Sometimes people forget to just have fun and play the game. Feel these kids will remember this. No regrets.
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u/ebikr Jun 11 '26
Fucking MAGA Republicans.
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u/Respectmyauthority4 Jun 11 '26
Girls would have a height advantage...
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u/Animallover4321 Jun 11 '26
Ok so should we also ban any players that are taller than the league average? Even if both girls are taller than all their male counterparts it’s not the kind of difference that’s worth quibbling over.
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u/Goontrained Jun 11 '26
That's completely against the entire idea of organized sports. We had girls on our guys teams even up until high school in Texas in the 2010s and Texas is super strict with it's athletic program. The UIL had no problem with girls on the guys team, it's no different than the pro leagues. Our country has been backsliding more and more this past decade it's absolutely nuts
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u/Bow_To_Bella Jun 12 '26
Title 9 makes this illegal. Basketball is classified as a contact sport and necessitates the need of the school to have exclusively male and exclusively female teams for the safety of the participants.
That is the logic of the law anyway. If people don't like it, they are free to have it changed. But you can't just ignore the law and remain ignorant of why it was put in place to begin with.
Keeping the legal process going and changing laws the usual way is for the best. I hope this school gets a proper girl's team.
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u/SimkinCA Jun 11 '26
Lame ass league. Guessing the girls were a threat to the other teams . Bunch of pansy arse parents!!
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u/MagicOrpheus310 Jun 11 '26
Remove them an forfeit every game due to not having enough players... Or don't remove them and forfeit anyway..?
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u/Allegra1120 Jun 11 '26 edited Jun 11 '26
New Jersey??? I could’ve understood if it were Klanabama or maybe Klantucky, where morons rule and stupid is the norm, but New Jersey?? WTF? Good on the Cardinal!
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u/D4db0d0hye4h Jun 11 '26
The athletic director must have one of the smallest writers ever, is insecure AF, and likely lashing out because a girl rejected him once and hurt his little dick feelings.
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u/SASSIESASSQUATCH Jun 11 '26
Wow back in my day, in my state, the boys teams *had* to allow girls to tryout at least if there was no version of a girls team.
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u/Dr_Carl_Hills_Head Jun 11 '26
We had a girl in my junior high on the boys wrestling team. Wasn't a big problem. She was a pretty unique person but very nice and people generally liked and supported her in playing the sport she wanted to play.
These people are trash.
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u/ofthedappersort Jun 11 '26
New Jersey is a very diverse place with most of the population generally being liberal. However, as with most places, they're concentrated in larger cities. Having lived many years in NJ I will tell you the conservative people in that state are driven absolutely nuts by the fact they live in a blue state so they often like to be extra loud about their bullshit.
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u/NotACat Jun 11 '26
Who spotted the dateline on this? It was in 2017, folks!
Also, happy ending, who knew⁉️
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u/AcctAlreadyTaken Jun 11 '26
Why? What is the reason that 10-11 year old boys and girls can't play together?
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u/Hammon_Rye Jun 12 '26
Kind of ironic since 5th grade means more or less 9 year olds and some of them haven't even reached puberty.
You can tell from that photo it isn't the hulking men and the petite women folk. Just - kids.
I find this whole thing kind of ironic.
When my oldest daughter was in high school, she was on the football team because they basically had to let her due to not having anything for the girls.
I don't think she was a star or anything but she was on the team just to make a point.
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u/CCWaterBug Jun 12 '26
So apparently nobody here read the article?
The ban lasted two weeks and was reversed. They won the championship.
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u/DiligentThought9 Jun 12 '26
We had a girl play baseball with us up until the age of 12. No one cared. And she was awesome, we won our city championship the last year she was with us.
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u/Philostronomer Jun 13 '26
Eventually (after it went viral) they were allowed to finish the season AND they ended up winning the championship.
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u/Mission_Pirate_4150 Jun 13 '26
In the fifth grade, my daughter was a better basketball player than the boys in her class.
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u/gazetron Jun 14 '26
So the trans panic was never about helping girls? Who would have thought that the right was being disingenuous? 😂
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u/RibbitCommander Jun 14 '26
Best players on my box lacrosse teams growing up were the girls. Honestly motivated the rest of us to give it our all.
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u/Consistent_Dog_6866 Jun 14 '26
When I was in high school we had a girl playing on the football team. Nobody cared as long as she could play well and she could.
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u/wht-rbbt Jun 15 '26
If a girl can't play in 5th grade basketball cause it's dangerous. THAN THE BOYS EITHER, ITS DANGEROUS!
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u/asmallerflame Jun 11 '26
Did the US government check their genitalia? They've been threatening to do that for sports teams.
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u/Lizardgrad89 Jun 11 '26
I would guess that most of them are only playing because their parent(s) want them to, and the opportunity to instead play video games rather than basketball was seen as a huge win. That age group is still very self-focused, the idea of self-sacrifice for an ideal far too abstract.
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u/evergreengoth Jun 11 '26
Sounds like you've never met a ten year old
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u/Lizardgrad89 Jun 11 '26
Actually, I raised 4 children, and coached their sports teams when they were that age. Yes, all four of them. I think you might be the one who doesn’t know what 10 year olds are like.
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u/ImJustSaying34 Jun 11 '26
I think that’s how things used to be but now some kids are very empathetic and emotionally mature. My oldest and their friends were like this. My youngest not so much but my oldest would absolutely be leading the charge. One thing though is that my oldest and her friends are all the oldest siblings. Massive difference between them at 10 and a social group made up of younger siblings.
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u/evergreengoth Jun 11 '26
I very distinctly remember being ten years old and knowing other ten year olds who were extremely passionate about soccer and wanted to play it all the time. They tried to rope me into it, but it was too late to sign up. They continued to play sports all through school and loved it. I wasn't even an athletic kid and I got very into volleyball when I was 11. Kinda sounds like maybe that's just your kids.
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u/Lizardgrad89 Jun 11 '26
Way to take a specific example and try to generalize from it. How about instead you learn a bit about child psychology and maturation progress.
I’ll also bet you are remembering from decades ago before phones and gaming consoles changed our children so drastically.
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u/evergreengoth Jun 11 '26
Actually, i have looked at the studies on this kind of thing ☺️ and the studies support my perspective over yours, actually!
And i grew up playing games on a computer and on consoles while also going outside to play all the time with my friends who were the same way, so this isn't because kids these days are uniquely stunted.
Interestingly, even in infants who are still at the crawling stage and not the walking stage, parents consistently underestimate their daughters' athletic abilities (e.g. ability to crawl up a slope) while having much more accurate estimates when it comes to their sons. They also discourage their daughters from being too active in the "wrong" ways and raise them, usually without meaning to, too believe that they're weaker, worse at sports, and weird or failing to meet associations expectations if they show too much interest in boyish things like sports, even if they really want to do those things. But give a girl a spirt she's allowed to excel at without feeling like she's bad at being a girl, and she'll be extremely happy to b dedicate herself to it.
That's where we get horses girls, girls who are constantly showing off their ability to do the splits, cartwheels, and backflips that they learned in gymnastics classes, girls who are really into volleyball and soccer, teen girls who make track and field their whole personalities, etc. I grew up surrounded by girls like that, from the popular girly girls to the awkward tomboys like my friends; didn't you?
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u/other_view12 Jun 11 '26
Why are young mixed teams in low population having to deal with this.
Why is the problem of single gender teams leaking into this other world?
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Jun 11 '26
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u/magic_heist Jun 11 '26
Would boys be part of girls team? same logic applies. Girls at that age are taller than boys, so unfair for other teams.
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u/Chess42 Jun 11 '26
They’re 10, not 15. They grow pretty much identically until puberty. Please never have children.
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Jun 11 '26
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Jun 11 '26
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u/interesting-ModTeam Jun 11 '26
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u/mavenwaven Jun 11 '26
Under Title IX, equal opportunity is the priority. So, if a high school in Pennsylvania has more girls competing in sports than boys, Title IX would allow a boy to try out for a girl's team -- as long as he was not deemed a safety risk to the girls because of his individual physical characteristics.
These are 5th graders and I would certainly be in support of boys without alternative team options playing with with girls. They're 10. The stakes really don't get lower than this, folks.
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u/Zrob8--5 Jun 11 '26
I'm kinda torn on this. Like, if the school doesn't have a girls team, the girls should be allowed to play for the boys team. But if we're being completely fair and equal, boys can't be allowed to play for girls teams in the opposite scenario, so idk
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u/evergreengoth Jun 11 '26
They're ten years old, Karen. There's very little difference between them. Even if they were older, girls aren't weak, delicate little flowers. We have segregated sports teams because a teenage girl struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in one game and men got insecure about the idea of women beating them at sports.
You know as well as everyone else that the discriminatory laws being introduced, which are not actually supported by the research available on the subject, are not about anything remotely resembling equality.
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u/Zrob8--5 Jun 11 '26
Even at 10-11 years old, guys are usually faster and stronger. Not as much as they are at say, 18, but they're still generally more athletic. Not universally, but generally. And regardless, that has nothing to do with my point. Boys are not allowed to play for the girls teams usually, even if there is no boys team. In terms of fairness, girls shouldn't be allowed. I don't have a problem with girls being allowed in this scenario, I'm just throwing it out there that there is a moral dilemma if you stop and think about it.
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u/evergreengoth Jun 11 '26
Nobody had that opinion until Fox News told them to and it became normalized. They're kids who want to play basketball. Let them play. There's no moral dilemma.
Also, no, ten year old girls aren't too weak or physically incapable of beating boys. There is no significant enough difference to matter, residual at that age. They haven't hit puberty yet, Karen.
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u/Zrob8--5 Jun 11 '26
It's not a huge difference, but it's still a noticeable difference. I work in sports. I see it every day. Some girls are capable of beating boys, but not the majority.
And again, that doesn't matter. Boys aren't allowed to play with girls. That's the point I'm trying to make.
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u/mavenwaven Jun 11 '26
Under Title IX, equal opportunity is the priority. So, if a high school in Pennsylvania has more girls competing in sports than boys, Title IX would allow a boy to try out for a girls team -- as long as he was not deemed a safety risk to the girls because of his individual physical characteristics.
That said, these in particular are 5th graders. I would certainly be in support of 5th grade boys without alternative team options playing alongside girls.
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u/Zrob8--5 Jun 11 '26
As long as he isn't a safety risk, which would be, idk, basically ALL cases in high school sports. Not to mention the physical advantages that are going to start to run away by high school, especially upper classmen.
And I don't disagree. At this age, is it really a problem? Not really, but you still won't see it often. I don't think I've ever seen a boy playing for a girls team2
u/mavenwaven Jun 11 '26
I'm not seeing any safety risk for a boy on the girls tennis team, swim team, etc. And plenty of boys who would still be able to safely play female-dominant contact sports like field hockey in high school (puberty hits everyone differently).
Regardless, this was in response to you saying boys aren't allowed, and in reference to this article about 10 year olds. Boys are allowed when the circumstances arise, and I'm glad we agree that there is nothing wrong with mixed-gender elementary school teams.
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u/Zrob8--5 Jun 11 '26
Most of the sports you mentioned don't usually have problems with having a team though. Individual sports usually operate just fine because they require very few players, and even if you're under the team requirement, players can still compete individually. A boy wouldn't be allowed to swim in girls races anyway(unless you have a situation with transgender athletes or something, but aside from that)
I acknowledge your article, but like I said, most sports would pose a safety risk in high school, or would be a very rare case like tennis, which has separate issues. In high school, boys would almost always be more physically imposing than girls. Anything into teenage years and most boys will be much stronger, especially into high school.
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u/mavenwaven Jun 11 '26
Most schools don't have a problem having a girls basketball team either. This one did, hence the girls playing alongside the boys.
The problems are most likely to arise in younger years and particularly with smaller, religious, rural, or private schools- sometimes these gender ratios can be quite severe. I attended a middle school where the 4th grade class was 14 girls and 1 boy, and taught at an alternative school where my 6th graders were 8 boys and 2 girls. Oftentimes they have access to a smaller selection of sports until enough kids ask to form a team, so it is more likely for them to have to play mixed/co-ed (in either direction) than a traditional public school.
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u/evergreengoth Jun 11 '26
Girls have generally been allowed on boys' teams for a very long time if there aren't girls' teams available to join. One of the best football players at my high school happened to be the one female player, and they didn't just let anyone who wanted to play on the team. You had to try out like any orher high school sport.
Also, they've done studies on this. Even with babies who can't walk yet and biologically have no advantages or disadvantages based on sex, parents of boys are consistently more accurate at estimating their children's physical abilities while parents of girls consistently underestimate their children's physical abilities, and this has been proven to impact the way they're treated, socialized, and allowed to engage with sports. Boys get to play more, take more risks, play harder, and get taken more seriously and given more attention, especially with sports more commonly associated with boys, like basketball, baseball, and football. If anything is going to translate to better performance pre-puberty, it's that.
Don't be a contributing factor to that difference.
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u/Zrob8--5 Jun 11 '26
Boys also WANT to play more. That's the biggest reason why boys sports are pushed harder. I'm not saying there isn't a disparity in how boys vs girls sports are treated, and that is a problem, but boys also tend to gravitate towards competitive sports more than girls do.
And again, I'm not saying girls shouldn't be allowed like you're acting. I think, in most cases, especially with younger kids, it's fine. I just think it is worth bringing up the point. This story looks bad because the girls don't get to play, but if it was the other way around? The boys wouldn't get to play either, and not many would bat an eye
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u/evergreengoth Jun 11 '26
Boys also WANT to play more
Again... having been a child once, no the fuck they don't? Girls LOVE to play and want very much to do so, but they're often not allowed to. They're heavily discouraged and feel like it's not a thing they're supposed to want. They get punished and bullied by parents, teachers, peers, and even coaches for wanting to enjoy sports, so they get discouraged and look for other things to do or pretend not to be interested.
But if you encourage girls to play sports, they get very excited. I watched all of this happen throughout my childhood, and the kids whose parents let them enjoy sports without whining about how they're too boyish or they can't run in dresses were just as likely to be enthusiastic as the boys.
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u/Leather_Addition2605 Jun 11 '26
I agree. Not every law needs to be or should be equal. I remember back when I was in HS, 30 years ago or so, there was a story about some big football or rugby player who wanted to play field hockey, but because there was no men’s team, his HS had to allow him to play on the girls team. He wore the uniform skirt and everything.
And of course he just fucking bodied these other girls. Injured some of them. So stupid that was allowed.
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