The WIAA establishes and maintains many categories for inclusion, fairness, and safety, but not for girls. Until the public demanded it

Girls is the only category they have, in their 121 year history, decided was not necessary

image by ChatGPT

I just looked up the results of the Washington state championship cross country meet, held this past Saturday, November 7. In that meet, a male runner, Logan Milaihoff, placed first for his girls’ team. Four days after Washington residents of all political stripes voted to restore girls’ sports as a sex category, with a means of verifying the eligibility criteria. That also marked the only time Washington voters had ever had the opportunity to weigh in the WIAA’s long running crime against girls, since the WIAA and some male rights advocates decided girls didn’t deserve their own category and abolished it unilaterally in 2007.

I want to point out the enormity, no no, atrocity, of what the WIAA did and has, without shame, defended with all their might for the last nearly 20 years. Because the WIAA right now is acting as if, for the past two decades, they had been charging 50 cents for popcorn at basketball games instead of 45 cents. I want you to understand the scale of the human rights violation—118,000 high school girls every year for 20 years—were told by the organization in charge of fair sport that the girls’ category didn’t matter, didn’t deserve eligibility requirements or verification. All the other categories mattered, even the one Ambulatory athlete matters, but girls do not. And the WIAA’s measure of success with this astronomic human rights violation they’ve presided over is that they’ve been able to silence, shame, threaten, and lie to girls such that they haven’t successfully been sued, and the many boys who have invaded girls’ sports have sucked so badly, hardly anyone noticed them.

Now, the Seattle school board, and other misogynists, are determined to overturn democracy in favor of theocracy—the religion of gender ideology. They want to continue this reign of male priority.

What struck me from that results page was how very many categories the WIAA maintains, just in the sport of cross country—4A, 3A, 2A, 1A, 1B/2B, Ambulatory, and something called Coed Unified. I didn’t even know what some of these categories were, but they’re all inclusion measures to make cross country competition fair, fun, and accessible for more kids.

That the WIAA finds it important and necessary to maintain fairness and safety for these many groups of athletes by creating categories, that they find it important to define the eligibility criteria for all these categories, and that they have established means of verifying athletes’ eligibility for those categories, but have, for 19 years, fought both eligibility criteria and means of verification for the girls category, half the school population, is INSANE. It can only be read as misogyny. They did not in 2007, and do not now, see females as a group deserving of a category. All these other groups of athletes, yes, but not girls. Think about that.

For example, 4A-1A are categories based on school size (enrollment), as are 1B/2B. The thinking behind enrollment categories is that larger schools are able to draw athletes from a larger pool, so the chances of having five runners (top five runners score for their team in cross country) who are really talented is much greater than a smaller school with a smaller pool of athletes. That doesn’t always play out—sometimes a small school will end up with a bunch of talented, healthy, hardworking kids and a great coach all present at the same time, and run faster times than larger schools—but in general, school size matters for fairness. If they did not have categories for smaller schools, teams from the largest schools would dominate the competition. The WIAA understands this from data from past decades. They understand that maintaining the many school enrollment categories IS an inclusion measure for disadvantaged athletes, in this case, athletes from smaller schools. In fact, they slice enrollment criteria pretty finely, such that 1B schools (1 to 104 students in grades 9–11) and 2B schools (105 to 224 students in grades 9–11) are deserving of their own categories during the regular season.

It’s odd that the WIAA understands the disadvantage that a school with 100 students has against a school with 110 students, such that they are willing to maintain separate categories for those schools, but they pretend not to understand the disadvantage girls face against boys. Just like school enrollment, the disadvantage girls face against boys is supported by more than 50 years of their own data. The WIAA simply ignores it in the case of girls’ sports. Why?

Two other groups of athletes the WIAA feels are deserving of their own category are Ambulatory and Coed Unified. The Ambulatory category is: “For athletes with physical, visual, or neurological impairments who are able to compete on foot (walking, jogging, or running). The athlete must have an official statement or documentation of a physical or ambulatory disability on file with the school nurse or the designated administrator responsible for student health.” This category is not for athletes who use a wheelchair; that’s a separate category. Like any category—except girls’—Ambulatory athletes do not self-identify into this category. Their disability must be verified by a medical professional.

Coed Unified is an inclusion strategy for athletes with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities. A Unified team “consists of one Unified athlete and one Unified partner (a student without intellectual and/or developmental disabilities who has not qualified for the postseason in a varsity race). Teams can be same sex or coed.” This category also has criteria and a verification process. The Unified athlete “must be officially identified by an agency or a qualified professional as having an intellectual disability, a cognitive delay (as measured by formal assessment), or significant learning/vocational problems stemming from a cognitive delay that requires specially designed instruction. A statement of this developmental or intellectual disability must be kept on file with the school’s health or athletic department.” Again, the WIAA defines real (not an an internal sense the athlete has about himself), observable, specific criteria for athletes who will be included in the category (in other words, they discriminate, ALL THE TIME), and identify a means of verifying whether athletes have met those criteria.

All of this shows in no uncertain terms that the WIAA understands perfectly why categories exist and why and how to maintain them. They’ve been establishing and maintaining categories for greater inclusion, for fairness and safety, since their inception in 1905. When, on one day in 2007, they very quickly and quietly decided to “include” males in the female category, they knew exactly what they were doing. And what they were not doing. They never considered “including” boys with girl identities in the boys’ category. They never considered creating a special category for athletes with trans identities (small numbers is not an excuse; the Ambulatory category had one athlete in it). They knew that by including athletes the category was designed to exclude (males), the girls’ category became null and void. It ceased to exist. Their decision to abolish the girls’ category also necessitated that they eliminate any means of verification for the category, which in this case, is verification of female sex. These were not unintended consequences. It was all deliberate.

They knew it was wrong which is why they did not consult member schools or coaches or girls or the public, nor did they issue a press release or notify media about the abolition of one of two sex categories, the most foundational and impactful category in sports. They’ve known it was wrong, and not a little wrong, but incest-level wrong, for 19 years.

The WIAA has never abolished an established category by including those who are not eligible. They have never decided a group of athletes no longer deserves the protections of their own category. They have never eliminated the verification process for a category. They have never violated federal law.

But they did all these things with one category—girls’.

And if the Seattle public school board has anything to say about it, will do it again. And again, I ask, why? Why are girls in Washington not deserving of their own category?