By Megan Burke | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice
Have you heard that Denver is welcoming a women’s professional soccer team and is hoping to build a new women’s soccer stadium? Wow, Colorado must be very supportive of women’s sports, right?
Unfortunately, our leaders will try to sell you on this notion while they have done nothing in this state to protect women’s sports.
In recent years, the inclusion of transgender athletes in women’s sports has become a highly debated issue across the United States, and Denver is no exception. While the city champions itself as progressive and inclusive, it does nothing to protect the integrity and fairness of women’s sports.
In the name of inclusion, we are excluding women and girls from their very own category. Colorado has passed ZERO laws to protect women’s & girls sports/spaces.
In fact, not only have they not passed any, they are constantly voting against them…leaving our girls vulnerable. Vulnerable to losing a spot on the team or podium. Vulnerable to competing against men who have performance advantages due to biological factors like larger hearts, lungs, greater muscle mass, and higher testosterone levels—factors that lead to differences in speed, strength, and endurance.
Women and girls are also more vulnerable to injury, as men are typically reported to have about 40–75% more muscle strength than women, according to the National Library of Medicine. Vulnerable to having to change in a locker room with a male, and vulnerable to not even wanting to play sports at all because of the above reasons.
According to a Gallup poll, 69% of Americans agree that men have no place in women’s sports. But just two weeks ago both of our Colorado Senators had a chance to protect Colorado girls by voting yes on the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act. Both Senators voted it down.
Senator Bennett, who has three daughters of his own, decided our daughters aren’t important enough to protect in sports. We should remind Mr. Bennett of all the wonderful things athletics bring to young women. For example, women who participate in sports tend to have a more positive body image and higher self-esteem compared to those who do not.
And to Senator Hickenlooper, who sent me an email telling me we should be more worried about trans athletes being physically harmed, I would ask him this: what about our girls being harmed and injured from boys/men in their very own category?
Take Payton McNabb from North Carolina, who was spiked in the face and knocked out cold, suffering permanent brain injuries caused by a male athlete playing on a girls’ high school volleyball team. That damage is done by allowing just one male into our sports.
Then there is the issue of the locker room, where our weak laws are allowing girls’ private spaces to disappear altogether.
East High School in Denver, which educates over 2,500 students, offers a troubling example. During Christmas break, East High School changed the girls’ bathroom on the second floor to an all-gender bathroom, but the boys’ bathroom remained the same. That means a 14-year-old girl is potentially forced to share a bathroom with an 18-year-old boy in one of the biggest public schools in our state.
Taking away young women’s private spaces is unacceptable, but with our current leaders and laws, nothing will be done to reverse this.
Even our youth sports in Colorado are being attacked with our pro-gender affirming laws and anti-protection of women’s sports/spaces. The Colorado Rapids Soccer club, one of the largest soccer clubs in the state, notes on its website that athletes can register on the team in which they “identify.”
Our oldest daughter played against two boys when she was only seven years old in GIRLS 7U soccer. This was not a co-ed league, either.
So while Colorado and our politicians will take credit for this monumental occasion of getting a female soccer team and a stadium, do not forget – they have done nothing to protect the very sport category they pretend to support!
Megan Kaltenbach Burke of Denver is a lifelong Colorado resident and mother to two daughters. An athlete all her life, Megan was a standout track performer in high school, winning 15 Class 5A State Championships during her time as a student at Smoky Hill High in Centennial, as well as 3 High School National Championships. She was the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame Female Athlete of the Year in 2001, was inducted into the Sportswomen of Colorado Hall of Fame in 2001, and in 2025 was inducted into the Colorado High School Hall of Fame.
She earned a full scholarship to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she won two NCAA Championships and held the American Record in the Distance Medley Relay. At Carolina, she earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism. After school she worked in the fashion industry in New York City before moving back to Colorado to start a family.
Megan is the Denver chapter leader for The Independent Women’s Network (IWN) and advocates for protecting Women’s and Girls’ Sports. She lives in Denver with her husband and their daughters Caroline (8) and Isabelle (5).
Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.