One of the joys of hockey (field hockey if you are in North America) is that young and old can play together. This is not just knocking a ball about; you will often see fathers and sons and mums and daughters playing in the same teams in competitive matches, particularly in the lower leagues. You even see parents taking the game up just so they can play against their kids.
The youngsters tend to be not quite as strong as the oldies, but can outrun them, and are often more technically skilled, having learned the game on synthetic rather than grass pitches. However, they can usefully absorb tactics and gameplay from the more experienced players around them for a couple of years, before moving on to try their luck against players closer to their prime.
This works because hockey is a non-contact sport. Essentially, if you make body contact with someone when you are tackling, you commit a foul. Not every tackle is clean, of course, but the differences in size, strength and speed are small enough to make it a reasonably fair contest, and everyone has fun.
The non-contact nature of the game means that juniors get a chance to play with the adults at quite young ages. Rules vary league by league, but where I play, boys are allowed in from 14. It’s quite common to see talented girls given a run out at age 12, if they’ve been through their growth spurt.
My coaching role is to help girls through this transition from kids’ hockey to the adult game. Mostly, we’re playing friendlies with teams made up of juniors, with a few adults thrown in to provide guidance. However, occasionally, we are called on to send a few extra players up to the ladies’ section to make up numbers. I pick the biggest and most skilled girls – the ones I think can cope.
However, when this happened a few weeks ago, we got a nasty shock and I think came quite close to disaster. That’s because the opposition turned up with a transgender player, in physical prime, built like something out of the backs division of a rugby team, and who played like it too – faster, stronger and much more aggressive than anything the girls are used to.
Some of them were clearly frightened, and stood off tackles. Some tried to get stuck in but were so completely outmuscled that it was mostly fruitless. Then, about a third of the way through the game it got very unpleasant.
Our striker, a girl of 15, is something of a rocket ship. Tactically, we get a lot of joy feeding her balls to run on to because there are so few in the league who can catch her. But not this time. Despite a 10-yard head start, and running at full speed, she was closed down by the rugby player over an astonishingly short distance, and was tackled. And as the stick landed, she crumpled, going to ground in a heap. The impression was of watching a wildlife documentary; a leopard taking down a gazelle, perhaps.
She was down a long time, but eventually was able to get to her feet and step off the pitch. She had been on the end of a tackle that crossed the line from non-contact to contact. It was a slight touch, nothing more, but the difference in weight and speed between the two players was enough for her to be wiped out. And it was enough to mean that she ended up with injuries to hip, wrist and – more worryingly – to her neck. Her match ended there and then.
While it was open to the umpires to issue a yellow card (or another colour) to the offending player, neither felt it appropriate. They agreed that it was an unfortunate touch, and nothing more; there was no malicious intent. And that’s the nub of the problem. Even in the absence of malice, and in a non-contact sport, there is a serious risk of injury to players if there is a major imbalance in size, weight, speed and aggression. Make no mistake, this is a disaster waiting to happen.
But we are dealing with a transgender player, so we are walking on eggshells. What should we do?
Some of the parents think we should speak to the authorities, but it’s fair to say that most people within the club are fearful of the consequences if we do. Nobody wants to be labelled a bigot. “Don’t say the word ‘transgender’, and don’t say ‘juniors’,” is a common theme of our soundings on the issue. So we are forced to go along with the pretence that neither of these characteristics had anything to do with what happened. We are forced to live a lie.
Some of the parents of the girls in the team have also told us they do not want their children facing such risks. They are right to do so – they could see the danger, as could I. As the responsible adult, I know that fingers will be pointed at me if we do get another injury, so I have undertaken to tell them if I think a fixture will feature a transgender player, so that they can absent themselves. In reality, in a team in which more than half the players are juniors, that will mean conceding matches. That’s grossly unfair to the children, some of whom don’t get to play competitive fixtures often anyway. Worse, if a transgender player appears unexpectedly with an opposition team, we may have to refuse to play on the spot. That’s unfair to everyone, but is an inevitable consequence of the pretence that the girls are simply playing against another woman. And it’s better than a child being seriously injured.
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The most straightforward solution is a third, open category for anyone who wishes to participate. I suspect this will either end up becoming another male category or will never get enough participants to have competitions. Which shows what a dreadfully unfunny joke this bizarre and reckless hype has become.
In the meantime – girls/women need to boycott any sporting event that is officially recognised as a women’s competition, if a transgender man is participating. That is clearly the only way the message is going to get across. Get called names? A badge of honour these days, they will eventually run out of insults. We’ve gone from right-wingers to extreme right wingers to ultra right wingers to fascists to Putin-lovers to anti-vaxxers to transphobes, regardless of the actual topic at hand. Treat it like the white noise that it is and let’s start regaining some sanity. All people, including the dupes who for some reason love being categorised in some victim class or another, will thank you for it.
“The most straightforward solution is a third, open category for anyone who wishes to participate. I suspect this will either end up becoming another male category or will never get enough participants to have competitions.”
Almost no-one will want to watch, so they will get no revenue, then the begging bowl will come out, as it always does for any sport and category of sport that doesn’t earn as much as the most popular sports, as if they had a divine right to cash. It’s an entertainment business, if you’re not entertaining anyone you fund yourself.
we think alike
Wholly in agreement.
That already exists, it’s called the “men’s” category.
That’s exactly the intention – “How many fingers, Winston?”
No-one is forcing them to do anything. They can withdraw and start their own league for sane people
Until another mentally ill tranny fucks that up too.
It is such a great pity that people are prepared to bow to a lie in fear of being called a bigot when in reality the name callers are the tyrants. What I wonder would have happened if that young girl had been seriously injured? would everyone just have shrugged and said oh dear? what about the young man pretending to be a girl? did he apologise, do you think in his pursuit of an easy win and attention he cares about any damage he inflicts when he knows that people are too scared to call him out? what sort of person is that? why does he need protection when he is clearly a danger.
However; I realise that the majority of people like to conform, regardless of the insanity they know they are being forced to accept. My view is we as biological women are being insulted and belittled by these Men pretending to be women, and their backers clearly hate the sex that gave birth to them and raised them, they are trying to reduce us to nothing more than breeders, a sub species, women need to start standing up for each other, for the sake of themselves, their mothers, sisters and daughters, and frankly for their sons who in 10 to 15 years may not wish to be partnered with a Man masquerading as a woman, because the true female has been confined to birth giving.
I think a start would be for any womans event be it a team sport or an individual sport, such as weight lifting etc, if a man turns up who claims to be a woman the entire team, or individual females should refuse to take part in the event.
Let the Trans people have their own class if that is what they want, a seperate class for a group who wish to be non gender.
Unless we stand together and push this nonsense back our lives will become as those in the Handmaids tale, but it wont be the bosses biological but unreproductive wives we are slave too, but the men who declare themselves to be superior women to the natural ones.
It is very hard to be a dissident, as heroes like Natan Sharansky showed, but having been a medical whistle-blower myself I can confirm that years later I am much happier that I stood up rather than taking the money on offer.
Hear hear! The only men who want to identify as women so they can compete against us are the ones who know they’d get their arses whipped competing against other men because they’re basically piss poor at their sport. It’s a sad state of affairs that the only way a loser who does not make the grade gets any sort of recognition is by cheating.
An interesting point.
Did he apologise?
I cannot quite understand the mindset of transgender people to want to compete against women.
Any victory is hollow and they do not appear to have any compassion It is all ‘me, me, me’.
Weren’t we told that women are equal to men, and anything a man can do women can do too? When it was suggested that there were some things for which men were best physically adaptable, but women were not this was typical patriarchal belittling of women.
So exactly what is the problem with men competing in women’s sports, it’s not as if woman are not as physically capable as men and equal, is it?
Let them suffer until they’ve had enough – they change it by walking away, until then they have to get on with it.
This is just a daft answer since hardly any woman I know would say that women are as physically strong as men. Most of us are very well aware of the reality of not being as physically strong as men and so are men aware of this which is of course why transgender women (i.e. men) constantly make physical threats such as death/rape etc.
The problem isn’t the belief that women are as strong as men, it’s the belief that women are entitled to 50% representation when they want it and physical standards should be relaxed to make that possible.
Which results in women being overrepresented in management jobs and men still doing the hard and dangerous work but with less chance of promotion.
None of which means that birds can’t have their own, inferior, all-female team sports.
No..I am a woman and have never been taught, or thought that….as a woman of the 70’s I have seriously put up with a lot of chauvinism… but equally I’ve met some brilliant men, whom I’ve loved and appreciated….what the vast majority of women want is equal opportunity….that’s it…
What is being portrayed now, is the same as everything else..a tiny minority of ‘whoever’ setting the agenda for the majority….
Erm, duh..!! ”So what exactly is the problem with men competing in women’s sports, it’s not as if women are not as physically capable as men and equal, is it?” Are you being deliberately thick? Isn’t the whole point in women competing against women and men competing against men that it’s then an equal playing field and nobody has an outright advantage of strength or speed? What if Usaine Bolt decided to identify as a woman? He’d be clocking up even more gold medals with a lot less effort if he were to be allowed to compete against women. Same goes for Michael Phelps, etc etc.
Yes women are equal to men in terms of rights, and doesn’t that fact just piss you right off because here you are again with your rambling, misogynist bullshit. If you can’t tell the difference between the anatomy and physiology of males and females then you badly need to go re-do med school, STAT! What an absolute embarrassment.
Not my problem – only women can deal with this, and they do that by walking away.
I agree but the problem is that the women come into the whole J K Rowling territory (only without the financial buffer/security) of death threats etc but yes en masse they should just do it.
yes they do I couldn’t agree more…but men have to help, as they are often the leaders of any ‘body’ who dictate the rules….
If there are almost no competitiors,there is no requirement for “leadership”.
Help me understand… In this context, a “transgender player” means a male, right?
I played hockey into my fifties – what a great game. Whilst I wholeheartedly agree with the writer, we had an interesting “anomoly”. Playing at fourth team level, we sometimes struggled to get a keeper. Fortunately, the ladies first team keeper was often able to stand in. She was hugely agressive and with a mask on, none of the opposition ever knew we had a ringer. To be fair, they never twigged even in the bar afterwards…..
“Nobody wants to be labelled a bigot.” Too many cowards in this woman. They’d rather a woman get killed or seriously injured than be labelled a bigot.
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Well oddly with hockey being a none contact sport there is the opertunity to play mixed hockey so perfect for the trans folk.
I coach 10-14 year old girls and still play at a reasonable standard given my age (mens). We play mixed badgers which is oldies with children male and female I really love it and it has given me the chance to play with my daughters. All you do is adjust your game to be less aggressive, don’t hit the ball as hard and keep the ball on the pitch and not in the air. Hockey is dangerous enough, so you don’t need to be an arse.
If this incident had happened with me any where near the pitch words would have been said. I think it’s a shame that her team mates didn’t stand up for her and the umpires didn’t see fit to produce a card. Just goes to show how toxic the situation has become that people will get hurt and be aloud to get hurt.
Player retention is becoming a real problem in hockey so I hope this young lady is not put off and has a long and happy hockey career because it is truly a great sport and very inclusive.
Well it’s not hockey but here’s another man, another powerlifter to be exact, who’s got the combined balls and morals to stand up for women’s rights in sports and protest this trans idiocy. These outrageous rules need to be highlighted and challenged, so this guy joins the Canadian powerlifting coach dude that I shared a few weeks back. Good on these men for making a stand against this nonsense.
”Dale Shepherd, 52, has been weightlifting for over four decades and participating in competitive weightlifting events since 2016. He has won numerous competitions, and currently holds nearly two dozen national records, according to The Global Powerlifting Committee (GPC) of New Zealand. …
He is aiming to participate in the women’s category for the [GPC’s] June deadlift event in order to protest policies which allow men who self-declare a female gender identity to compete against women.”
https://notthebee.com/article/new-zealands-strongest-man-is-self-identifying-as-a-woman-in-order-to-protest-transgender-policies-in-a-global-weightlifting-competition
But walking scumbag Biden wants males to keep participating in women’s sports. Honestly, my daughter’s 11yrs and plays sports competitively and even at that age they cannot play mixed singles racquet sports, only mixed doubles, due to the advantage boys have.
”…the consequence of allowing biological males to compete in women’s sports is painfully obvious. Girls who have—with great discipline and sacrifice—dedicated themselves to their chosen sport will often be consigned to second and third place or to warming the bench because of the unfair advantage enjoyed by biological males.
The Biden Administration—and apparently much of our society—have apparently decided that the hard work, dreams, goals, and aspirations of the great majority of female competitive athletes signify less than the desire of transgender boys to compete with them. Why?”
https://petermcculloughmd.substack.com/p/biden-administration-will-veto-protection
I’m afraid the only way this nonsense will be stopped is for women and girls (at every competitive level, from school sports to Olympics) to stop participating in any sport if a man-in-a-frock is allowed to compete with them.
Stand up for yourselves! Speak the truth. Sex is a biological fact. It cannot be changed. This person is a man and has no place in women’s sports. If you all speak out you can’t all be bigots. You will be the majority. The emperor has no clothes and more and more people are saying so. The era of Trans is hopefully almost over.
People need to stop being afraid of being labeled a “bigot”, “transphobe”, or whatever other stupid label they want to give you to shut you up. Just stand up for what is right and ignore the insults.