Teenage female hockey player loses teeth after being hit by shot from male opponent

[NotSoLittle]

Report in the Telegraph:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/sports/hockey/massachusetts-high-school-hockey-female-teeth-male-opponent/

Apparently there's and equal rights amendment in Massachusetts that allows boys and girls at high-school level to participate in sport under the opposite gender [ie sex] if it is not made available to their own.

A female defender was hit full in the face with a shot off the stick of a male player, who was allowed to compete on a girls’ team on the basis that field hockey in Massachusetts is traditionally a female sport.

The injured girl's team captain, has written an impassioned letter to the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association (MIAA), urging a rethink of state law around male involvement in female competitions.

The athletic director for the team the male was on, "confirmed that the player who had taken the shot was a male varsity student and co-captain but insisted that he had the “exact same right to participate as any player on the team.”"

The MIAA said in a statement: “We respect and understand the complexity and concerns that exist regarding student safety. However, student safety has not been a successful defence to excluding students of one gender from participating on the teams of the opposite gender. The arguments generally fail due to the lack of correlation between injuries and mixed-gender teams.”

The captain of the injured girl's team said: "...How much longer does the MIAA plan on using girls as statistical data points before they realise that boys do not belong in girls’ sports? Twenty injuries? One hundred? Death?.."

I can't quite believe this. I used to play hockey in my school days, and some of the girls could be vicious, and with me being very short and petite it was dodgy me even playing against some of the bigger ones. The damage a boy could have caused doesn't even bear thinking about!

My son played on a mixed team. It was roughly 50/50 split of male to female but every single member of the team wore a moth guard.

Almost all sports involve risks which players need to be aware of before taking part.

Grantanow the point is, a female hockey player goes on to the field anticipating one kind of risk, but finding a transwoman on the opposing team represents an entirely different level of risk. Are you saying that if that risk is greater than they are supposed to just walk off the pitch and give up playing?!

A proper risk assessment can only be carried out if one has access to all the necessary and complete information

if I think im playing a team of women I’ll risk assess on that basis. If one person on that team turns out to be a man then my risk assessment is meaningless as it was carried out on the basis of erroneous information

I think it will take a death. It is beyond awful that we are here. If only people could see sense and not be cowards

There's a place for mixed hockey. Well, quite a few places actually - players at either extreme of the age range and those taking part in Walking Hockey or Flyerz Hockey can really benefit from the existence of mixed teams particularly in smaller clubs. And lots of regular club players also enjoy the standard mixed game already described.
But in all those circumstances it's completely transparent, everyone understands that there will be players of the other sex on the pitch and the make up of teams and the rules are controlled to make things as fair and safe as possible.
None of that applies if a male bodied player is on a female team. It's unregulated mixed hockey by stealth, not consented to by the female players and without any of the safeguards that accompany proper mixed matches. Not fair, and not safe. Male bodied players can play on men's teams or mixed teams, there's no shortage of opportunities for them and it is about time the national and international regulatory bodies realised this and followed the example of the sports that have cottoned on already.

Almost all sports involve risks which players need to be aware of before taking part.

Including the players causing the risk. In any sort of mixed-sex scenario it should be being made absolutely clear to the male players how much risk they potentially pose to the female players, and what extra consideration and enforcement is applying to them as a result.

What we're seeing a lot of is male players who are being pandered to to the extent of people around them denying they cause any sort of risk, so they will likely be especially unrestrained compared to a male player in a proper mixed-sex scenario.

That poor girl, you can hear one of the onlookers shouting something about "classy sportsmanship" at about 30 secs into the video.