A girls' high school soccer team in New Hampshire forfeited its game Monday against a team that was fielding a transgender goalkeeper.
According to the Concord Monitor, a number of players on the Bishop Brady High School soccer team forfeited the game over Kearsarge Regional High School's goalkeeper, Maelle Jacques.
“It is unfortunate that the program was not able to play last Friday in what would have been the second to last home game on the schedule,” said Taylor Lipinski, Kearsarge’s athletic director. “We will continue to work to create as many opportunities for our student-athletes as possible.”
Bishop Brady said it was unable to field enough players for "multiple reasons."
“We aim to participate with the best of sportsmanship and fairness based on our faith as Catholic Christians. Any student who discerns to opt out of playing for their own reasons are supported and never penalized,” wrote David Thibault, the superintendent of Catholic Schools for the Diocese of Manchester, in a statement. “Every person is made in God’s image with a body and soul, male and female. Therefore, every person’s dignity, and every student athlete’s dignity, must be upheld. This includes student-athletes from every school, public, private, or Catholic.”
Last month in Bow, two parents were issued no-trespass orders for wearing pink armbands emblazoned with "XX" to symbolize the chromosomes associated with biological females while attending a girls' soccer game against Plymouth High School, which has a transgender athlete on its team.
New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu responded to the incident, saying "“First Amendment rights are very clear. People have the right to say certain things and protest.”
Currently, law and policy allows transgender athletes to play in New Hampshire high school sports. Two transgender athletes in the state, Parker Tirrell and Iris Turmelle, and their families are suing their respective school districts and the New Hampshire commissioner of education, Frank Edelblut, to challenge a law that barred students assigned male at birth from playing on girls’ school sports teams in grades five through 12.
