By Jennifer Sey | Commentary, Outkick
Not one currently competing female star has spoken up to defend the very category that made their success possible.
This is the moment we get real about standing up for women and girls.
Even though Governor Gavin Newsom acknowledged in April that it was “deeply unfair” for boys to compete in girls’ sports, the California Department of Education (CDE) and California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) have continued to allow males to compete — and win — in women’s sports.
At the California CIF Championships in June, a male athlete swept gold in the high jump and triple jump and took silver in the long jump, displacing female athletes. Lelani Laruelle should have won gold, with Jillene Wetteland and Julia Teven placing second and third. Katie McGuinness was pushed to fourth in the long jump. Reese Hogan, who won her triple jump section, was denied a state title.
And now the Trump administration is going on offense. The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has issued a proposed resolution. California has 10 days to rescind the titles and awards given to those who competed and won in women’s categories and issue apologies to the female athletes affected by this injustice. But this is a short-term fix to a long-standing erosion of our rights.
This isn’t just federal enforcement. It’s a cultural reckoning.
As we mark the 53rd anniversary of Title IX, the silence from America’s athletic elite is deafening. Not one currently competing female star — not Jordan Chiles, Caitlin Clark, Coco Gauff, or Sophia Smith — has spoken up to defend the very category that made their success possible.
And not a single major brand — not Nike, Adidas, Lululemon or Athleta — has stood up for the protection of women’s sports. Their silence says everything.
Title IX was a hard-won promise: that no person, based on sex, would be denied opportunities in education or athletics. But that promise is being broken by apparatchiks protecting their ideology in California, Maine, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, and my home state of Colorado.
Girls are being told to stay quiet and accept their erasure — not just when they lose to male athletes, but when their discomfort is dismissed, their training devalued, and their rightful place on the podium stolen. And to add insult to injury, they are vilified as bigots if they dare to stand up in their defense.
If we don’t take back Title IX, no one will.
Since Title IX passed in 1972, girls’ participation in high school sports has soared 1000%. I was born in 1969. I was one of its earliest beneficiaries.
I started gymnastics in 1974, just two years after the law’s passage. Before 1972, if you were an athletic little girl like me, your options were limited. But I was lucky. I was a busy kid who could often be found “bouncing off the walls” and my parents sent me to gymnastics.
After Olga Korbut charmed the world in the 1972 Olympics, little girls across the country begged their parents to let them take gymnastics. Because of Title IX, entrepreneurial coaches saw an opportunity: parents would want their daughters in athletics because they would have the opportunity to compete throughout high school and possibly even secure a college scholarship. Sports were no longer a dead end for girls.
I was one of those girls. After starting gymnastics at the age of 5, I made my first national team at 11. And by the time I was 17, I became the national champion.
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