Despite pro-Trump past, trans state champ's mom gives daughter unwavering support
CLOVIS, Fresno County — Nereyda Hernandez, the mother of transgender track and field athlete AB Hernandez, 16, who was recently crowned a California state champion in girls triple jump and high jump, told the Chronicle in an exclusive interview that she used to be a supporter of President Donald Trump.
She raised her four daughters, including AB, in the Catholic faith. They regularly attended Sunday service in the small town of Jurupa Valley in Riverside County, which Trump won by a slim margin of 1.26% in the 2024 election.
As reported by Capital & Main in April, Nereyda did not find out that AB, now a junior at Jurupa Valley High School, was trans until she was in the eighth grade. The journey they then embarked upon together led Nereyda, who did not specify in which election or elections she voted for Trump, to rethink her disposition toward the President.
'I just admired our President, I just thought, 'Oh OK, he's intelligent, he's a businessman,' and he had my initial vote,' Nereyda said. 'But just talking to AB … you start analyzing things in a different way.'
AB was publicly outed as transgender in October, when Jessica Tapia, president of the Jurupa Unified School District Board of Education and who formerly taught physical education at Jurupa Valley High School, doxxed the teenager via a series of Instagram posts. Tapia was reportedly fired from the school in January of 2023 for refusing to acknowledge the pronouns of trans and nonbinary students, in violation of district policy.
By February, Sonja Shaw, president of the Chino Valley Unified School District, joined Tapia in doxxing AB with an Instagram post that revealed her full name and the high school she attended.
Nereyda sent a cease-and-desist letter to Tapia and Shaw, both of whom are part of the Save Girls Sports association, an organization dedicated to banning trans athletes from competing in California school sports. Three weeks ago, Tapia and Shaw showed up to a track meet at Yorba Linda High School to heckle AB and Nereyda, who still had yet to witness the full magnitude of criticism and national media attention her daughter would receive.
Trump threatened in a Truth Social post on Tuesday that he would withhold federal funding from California if the California Interscholastic Federation followed its own rules and allowed AB to compete at the state meet.
'I'm not surprised,' Nereyda said of Trump's post. 'Even on the first term, I had my own ideas about our President. But I was a Trump supporter, and I don't think people understand that. I feel like people think, 'OK, well, if you're allies with this community or you represent this community, you can't have this presidential vote.' And it's not like that. I always admired the President for being a businessman. I was like, 'OK, he could be good for our economy,' but when it comes to putting stuff out there (on social media), I've always thought it's immature of a person to have that leadership role, to put a lot of information.'
In what appeared to be a response to Trump, the CIF announced mere hours later its new policy, that would allow the athlete with the next qualifying mark in triple jump, high jump and long jump to participate, also issuing a duplicate medal to the next-best finisher behind Hernandez in those three events.
'I wish they would have waited,' Nereyda said Sunday morning of the policy change. 'I mean, we can see that the girls weren't having a problem with it.'
Despite expectations that protesters against AB's participation would show up at Veteran's Memorial Stadium, the site of the CIF state track and field championships, Nereyda said her daughter never considered skipping the event. A pair of transgender athletes qualified for the 2023 track and field championship, but both did not show up in the wake of harassment they received.
Among the demonstrations across the two-day event this weekend was plane trailing the banner, 'NO BOYS IN GIRLS' SPORTS!' which was flown over the stadium at the start of prelims. Neither Nereyda nor AB noticed, according to Nereyda; they were both too focused on the meet itself. AB had an opportunity to achieve a goal she had first set for herself as a freshman, which marked her first year as a track and field athlete. She aimed to be a state champion.
AB won a third-place medal at state in 2024. Amid the current political focus on this particular front in the long-simmering argument over transgender people's place in public life, Nereyda only hoped her daughter could compete in a safe environment as she looked to place in three events this time around.
'What I saw with that is a culture war, and I wasn't going to entertain it,' Nereyda said.
'We're here to support AB and the other kids.'
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