A biological male just swept all three girls' jumping events at the CIF Southern Section Track and Field Masters meet in Ventura County on Saturday — beating every girl who showed up thinking hard work and talent still mattered in California high school sports.
Spoiler alert: they don't.
AB Hernandez, a senior at Jurupa Valley High School, took first place in the high jump, long jump, and triple jump at the regional championship on May 24, clearing every biological female competitor in all three events. According to Breitbart, the margins weren't even close enough to pretend this was a fair fight.
In the high jump, Hernandez cleared 5 feet, 8 inches. The runner-up — you know, the actual girl who should have won — hit 5 feet, 6 inches. In the long jump, Hernandez posted 20 feet, 4.75 inches against the second-place finisher's 19 feet, 1.75 inches. And in the triple jump, Hernandez landed at 40 feet, 6.6 inches while the next girl managed 39 feet, 4.05 inches.
Three events. Three golds. Three girls who trained their entire high school careers watching their moment get handed to someone with a biological advantage that no amount of "inclusion" rhetoric can explain away.
Here's the part that should make your blood boil: under the California Interscholastic Federation's rules, both Hernandez and the second-place female finishers receive gold medals and podium placement. So the girls get a participation trophy disguised as a gold medal while everyone pretends that makes it okay. How generous. Nothing says "we value women's athletics" like telling a 17-year-old girl she's a co-champion with the biological male who just dusted her by over a foot in the long jump.
And where is Governor Gavin Newsom on this? Silent, naturally. The man who never misses a chance to lecture the rest of America about equity can't seem to find the microphone when girls in his own state are getting their athletic dreams steamrolled in broad daylight. But that's California for you — the state where "protecting women" means everything except actually protecting women.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, West Virginia's governor called the whole trend what it is: "fundamental unfairness." Two words. That's all it takes. It's not complicated. It's not bigotry. It's biology. But in California, biology is apparently a social construct that you can override with a policy memo.
The Department of Justice has actually filed a lawsuit against California state agencies over alleged Title IX violations related to exactly this kind of situation. You read that right — the federal government is suing California for violating the very law that was designed to protect women's sports. Title IX was written so girls could compete. Now it's being used as a legal shield to let biological males take their trophies.
We've officially come full circle.
What makes this story worse is who's missing from it. The girls who lost — the ones who woke up at 5 a.m. for practice, who sacrificed weekends and social lives, who dreamed about standing on that podium at regionals — don't even get a quote. Nobody asked them how it felt. Nobody asked their parents. Nobody asked their coaches. The story is about the person who won, and the rest of them are just background characters in someone else's narrative.
Hernandez is now expected to compete at the California state championships later this month. So if you thought the regionals were bad, buckle up. We get to watch this play out on an even bigger stage while every adult in the room pretends they don't see what's happening.
This isn't a sports story. It's a cowardice story. Every official at the CIF who signed off on this policy, every school administrator who nodded along, every politician in Sacramento who looked the other way — they all chose the path of least resistance over the girls they were supposed to protect.
Those girls lost more than a track meet on Saturday. They lost the adults who were supposed to fight for them.
But hey, at least they got a participation gold medal. In California, that's what passes for fairness.