It was solely about six weeks in the past when one of many extra controversial scenes of the 2024 Olympics occurred.
That is when Italian 66kg boxer Angela Carini met Algerian boxer Imane Khelif. Simply 45 seconds into the combat, Carini stop after getting hit by a Khelif punch and stop reasonably than go on combating. It seems that Khelif had been focused by a Russian oligarch in control of sanctioning beginner boxing for disqualification, and had used false biometric exams to label the Algerian boxer as a organic male. It wasn’t true, and Khelif would win gold within the weight class.
So, what does this story should do with a subject hockey workforce situated proper on the Rhode Island-Massachusetts border?
Properly, a narrative got here out this week that the workforce at Dighton-Rehoboth (Mass.) could be forfeiting a recreation in opposition to Somerset-Berkley (Mass.) as a result of there was a boy on the roster. Not that the male participant was dominating the scoring or had triggered harm to an opponent. Simply the mere existence of the participant raised sufficient objections sufficient to make the workforce stop.
And we’re calling it that right here. Dighton-Rehoboth is making its college students stop reasonably than face a male participant. It’s borne from a state of affairs when a D-R participant deflected a penalty nook shot into her personal head. And the shooter occurred to be a male participant from Swampscott (Mass.).
That incident led the varsity district to go a rule final July which says, partly, “No student-athlete on a single-sex workforce shall be penalized by the District in any method for refusing to play…in opposition to an opposing workforce as a result of that workforce features a member of the other intercourse.”
It’s a rule which solely impacts this one faculty district, and isn’t a rule which is subscribed to by the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Affiliation.
And it shouldn’t; the Massachusetts Equal Rights Modification continues to be in pressure. It ensures equal entry to athletic participation in conditions the place there isn’t a single-gender equal. Which means that the way in which ahead ought to be if Dighton-Rehoboth and different faculty districts supply boys’ subject hockey on boys groups.
So far as we all know, that needle hasn’t moved in any respect. And it’s too unhealthy that faculty districts have discovered intelligent methods of getting individuals to not play a sport by forfeiture or outright bans on offending gamers, reasonably than engaged on participation.
Some individuals on this state of affairs must go.
