Trans athlete fires message toward critics after dominating girls' 400 for state title
Verónica Garcia, a transgender competitor, has been on top of the competition in the girls' 400-meter races during the Washington state outdoor season in 2025 and finished in first place during the state championships on Saturday.
Garcia, who competes for East Valley High School in Spokane, took home the title in the 2A race for the second straight year. Garcia finished first in the 2A Greater Spokane League District Championship on May 23 and won several other regular-season races over the course of the year.
On Saturday, Garcia told The Seattle Times there were boos from the crowd that didn't agree that biological males should compete against girls in sports. However, Garcia fired back with a defiant message after the race was over.
"I'll be honest, I kind of expect it," Garcia told the outlet. "But it maybe didn't have their intended effect. It made me angry, but not angry as in, I wanted to give up, but angry as in, I'm going to push.
"I'm going to put this in the most PG-13 way. I'm just going to say it's a damn shame they don't have anything else better to do. I hope they get a life. But oh well. It just shows who they are as people."
Garcia finished with a time of 55.70, more than a full second faster than the second-place finisher who clocked in at 56.75.
Garcia also won a state championship last year and complained about the lack of sportsmanship from fellow competitors.
Washington has been among the states to defy President Donald Trump's executive order to keep men out of women's sports.
The Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA)'s Representative Assembly proposed two amendments to its policies earlier this year that would keep girls' sports to biological females only and potentially offer an open division if student-athletes were interested.
The proposals were advisory votes only and no changes to the rules were made. Washington officials have cautioned that any proposed change would violate state law.
BELOW VIDEO IS FROM 2024:
Washington state law requires local educational agencies to allow transgender students to participate in interscholastic sports "that most closely aligns with their gender identity," according to the WIAA.
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