Boy swimmers race against girls in Mass. People not happy

Almonte should have found a 14-year-old team to play for. I'd find it hard to believe in NYC that there isn't a league for 14 year olds. He had access to that. Only, his family and others chose for him to cheat.

In swimming, it's not cheating for the boys to compete and beat against the girls. The boys are obeying the rules.

 

Baron, if you say girls competing in boys sports = boys competing in girls sports, you're just being intentionally obtuse and argumentative. I'm pretty sure you understand the difference.

 

Sorry LTL, but to me, it is equal. Yes, there are physical differences. But if you're going to ignore those physical differences when a girl plays on a boys team, then you have to ignore the physical differences when a boy plays on a girls team.

 

Some leagues in New Jersey allow coed swimming, so girls and boys compete against each other directly. Most are at small private schools, and they're considered boys teams for the postseason.

There was one team in my coverage area where a couple of girls regularly beat the boys, because they were year-round swimmers and most of the boys were not.

We also had a coed soccer team at a public school which didn't field girls soccer until recently. I think in its last season, a female freshman center midfielder made all the boys on her own team (and a lot of opponents) look gawdawful. She wound up transferring to a local private school with a really good girls soccer team after a year, and is now starting at a D-1 program on scholarship.

 

It is not ignoring the differences. It is understanding that in one of the cases the person makin the move does not gain physical advantage from moving, and in the other case the person making the move does gain physical advantage.

You are arguing this from a theoretical or legal standpoint. It really isn't all that difficult to understand in real life.

 

In most cases (though certainly not all) where a girl competes on a boys team, it's in a situation where the sport itself does not cross gender lines, at least in the state sanctioning body. There is no girls football, there is no girls baseball (and softball is a completely different sport with different skill sets).

I don't have a problem with the boy who was on a field hockey team because I don't know of any state that has a boys field hockey league. I wouldn't have a problem with a boy who wanted to play softball, especially if he made his team stop those idiotic chants. There are no comparable sports for them sanctioned by the state. But I also don't think a boy should be able to join a girls soccer team or vice versa when each have a comparable sport available.

When a girl joins a baseball or football team, no one is saying "ignore the physical differences." Ideally, she's good enough at what she does that the physical differences are nullified by her skill. Take that knuckleballer - she was plenty good enough to beat any hitter, at least at that age. They weren't "ignoring her physical differences."

But these swimming boys, especially for an individual sport, are different because the sport is sanctioned by the state, just not offered by the school. In that case, it's tough luck, much like if a school doesn't offer the language elective you really wanted to take. If it's really that important to you, it seems like something you would pursue other ways such as club swimming, which is where the real competition takes place in that sport. Or you petition the MIAA to take times posted at fall meets as qualifiers to the boys sectionals and state meets, and then say something like "swimming for time only" at those meets to they're ineligible for first plays in a girls competition.

All that said, it's really dumb to hold boys swimming at a different time of year that is inherently more expensive.

 

Why not co-op teams? If School A has one boy who wants to swim, but he's the only one so School A has no swim team, why can't the boy swim for the School B team in some sort of co-op? That's what small schools do with football, when they have like 10 boys who want to play but not enough to field a team - those boys play with the team from the school the next town over. Win-win.

 

The kicker of this is that boys golf is a fall sport for the MIAA, girls golf is a spring sport. A girl that plays on the boys golf team has her score counted in regular season matches, competes in the league championship, competes in sectionals, but if she qualifies for the state tournament as an individual she has to wait until spring.

(I don't know what would have happened if her team had advanced to the state tournament, guessing she would have competed as part of the team, but not eligible for the individual title. Though it's worth noting that if you stink in sectionals and advance to states as part of the team and then shoot lights out and finish with the low score of the day you are not the individual champion.)

 

If your school is too small or doesn't have enough kids interested in a sport to field a team, you don't get to play that sport.

If playing that sport is really really really so important to you your parents feel it is utterly indispensable to the educational experience, they should either pack up and move to a school which does offer it, pay to send you to a private school that offers it, or pay for you to join a sports club which offers it.

Other than that, parents trying to sneak boys onto girls teams in any sport are basically just using a backdoor/stealth method to try to destroy the girls teams.

Once that shit starts gaining traction, the "girls varsity basketball team" will be taken over by the fuckoffs who got cut after two days of boys basketball practice. The "girls varsity softball team" will be taken over by the fuckoffs who got cut in freshman baseball.

 

I absolutely agree. It's just like how as soon as it's legal for gays to marry, people will start demanding to marry children or horses.

 

I'd have shouted out, "Awesome. Where would you have placed in the boys' meet, 400th place?"

 

Except that he wouldn't have that choice since they already have a boys team.