Gender isn't the problem with youth sports. Exclusion is

CNN

21 hours ago

LGBTQ issues
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EDITOR'S NOTE: Dr. Jennifer Harvey is vice president for academic affairs at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois. Her books include 'Antiracism as Daily Practice: Refuse Shame, Change White Communities and Help Create a Just World' and 'Raising White Kids: Bringing Up Children in a Racially Unjust America.'
'Who wants to start in goal?' I asked. Four kids' hands shot up. 'OK. We'll go in this order today.' I recalled who'd seemed the most ready at our last practice and suggested an order. 'Next game, we'll change it up,' I promised. A few minutes later the whistle blew to begin the game, and I felt giddy.
But my feelings were nothing compared with the kids', who were elated to have pulled on 'real' uniforms, shin guards and, for a lucky few, goalie gloves.
We started dreaming up this gender-inclusive soccer team three months ago and now here they were — the Primers, ranging from 7 to 11 years old — actually running around the field.
I watched kids try to pass, calling out someone's name as we had practiced before kicking it in that teammate's general direction. They posed for throw-ins, concentrating hard to keep both feet on the ground.
And then, 'Get in front of him, get in front of him!' our tiny goalie shrieked as the other team brought the ball down the field. My kid hustled from midfield to get back and help the defense. Bam. Less than five minutes and the other team scored the first of what would become many goals.
When the final whistle blew, the Primers left the field sweaty and tired but still regaling one another with tales from the game. Despite the lopsided score, everyone had a blast.
No one was focused on anyone's gender.
And yet around the country, legislators have taken it on themselves to dictate who can play on which teams. The US Supreme Court decided on July 3 it would weigh in, as the justices agreed that they would review two cases in the next term challenging sports bans for transgender women and girls in Idaho and West Virginia.
Though lower courts ruled against the bans, it seems the majority of the public is on the opposite side. A Gallup poll conducted in May asked whether transgender athletes 'should only be allowed to play on sports teams that match their birth gender,' and nearly 7 in 10 respondents answered in the affirmative. The same poll indicated that support for transgender athletes' participation on teams that align with their gender has decreased 10 percentage points since 2021, from 34% to 24%.
These polls make me sad for so many reasons.
As a scholar, I long for spaces where we can have substantive, nuanced conversations, infused with humility and curiosity, about the diversities of sex and gender in our human experiences, without people's well-being and lives being used to stoke fear or getting caricatured on social media.
As a parent, I want to insist a complex conversation about highly elite sports be carefully separated from one about youth sports—a place where kids just want to play.
I was a fierce competitor in my 20 years of soccer playing through and beyond college. I worked relentlessly on and off the field because I wanted to win and was driven to be the best. But behind that drive was my recognition of how meaningful it was to be part of a collective experience, with a diverse array of humans, sharing the joy, pain, challenges and celebrations of sport.
I remember acutely the feelings that came over me when play stopped and all the athletes on the field took a knee when someone got hurt. The circumstances for taking a knee — injury — were unwelcome. But pride and purpose washed over all of us when we'd pause to show our respect, concern and care.
In that moment, we were collectively communicating our belief that the well-being of everyone, even an opponent, surpassed everything else on the field — even winning. It gave us all a chance to take a breath and reconnect with the shared experiences that had gotten most of us out on the field in the first place: the thrill of being active and learning to do new things in the physical realm and the pleasure of getting to do so with other people.
Participation in sports brings long-lasting benefits that have little or nothing to do with intense competition or capital 'V' victories. This is especially true for children and youth.
I've watched both my children learn how — or how not! — to communicate with others, to value different strengths and gifts, to offer encouragement, to understand that a whole can become greater than the sum of its parts. This all happens when we treat each other in a way that builds a culture allowing for that equation to come true.
My kids' relationships with sports are different from one another's and from mine. But each one moved through developmentally valuable experiences. The kids learned about their bodies, worked through the rough feelings of losing and practiced winning graciously; they faced physical and emotional challenges that, in a supportive environment, stretched them in healthy ways that will serve them well as adults.
Sports isn't everyone's cup of tea. But the contributions that positive experiences in sports make to help young people thrive are many and well-documented: greater self-confidence and more solid academics; stronger connections with school, peers and community; lower rates of substance abuse; capacity for hard work and resilience; and a deeper sense of empowerment .
There's nothing on this list I take for granted. Shortly before the pandemic, one of my kids gave up the basketball and soccer teams they had loved so much. At age 9, my child found that sports had become beyond their reach because of a barrier built out of a sex/gender binary that my child knew didn't apply to their lived experience.
It didn't take a formal transgender sports ban for them to be excluded. When you don't fit neatly into the box marked on your birth certificate, messages that 'you don't belong' are communicated to you every day through the most mundane interactions — often with no malice intended.
I wasn't worried about how my child's gender journey would unfold. I was worried that the joys, lessons and benefits of being involved in sports might be lost to them forever.
A couple of years later, our wildly successful experiment creating the Primers opened a door. On this gender-inclusive soccer team, pronouns were respected and no one's identity was questioned. It became a two-year phenomenon in a league open to working with us, where the kids loved each other madly and parents, grandparents and even neighbors and friends gathered each week to cheer like fanatics with cowbells.
An occasional referee or opposing player looked confused when we first walked onto the field, but overwhelmingly, this group of young, gender-diverse kids experienced respect from others and created belonging together.
Even though we lost every game we ever played except for one — when we tied — the kids on the Primers also got to experience the joys, challenges and celebrations of sports; the pleasure of learning about and being active in their bodies; and so many of the other developmental benefits that sports can make possible — and that all kids deserve.
Winning was never the point. The fact of the matter is, most kids are never going to become professional athletes. Most aren't even going to compete in college or get scholarships to pay their way.
We've lost the thread when it comes to youth in sports — yet another loss reflected in that Gallup poll. The language and specificity of bans that constrain which children get to play sports and where vary, but increasing numbers of them reach down to constrain children as young as kindergarten. In fact, it was a rising sixth grader who challenged the West Virginia sports ban that the Supreme Court will rule on next term.
Though it was not sports-specific, the court's decision to uphold Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth is likely to make this problem worse. Even where official bans don't exist, there's so much distortion and hostility now in the way we talk about sex, gender and sports, I suspect that the magic that created the Primers wouldn't even be possible in most places.
The costs here are real and heavy. Transgender children and youth bear the brunt of them. But, frankly, the lives of all children and youth are made poorer when we narrow and exclude instead of being curious and welcoming.
The Primers thrived in a co-ed division (which in reality meant we usually played against boys). We could just as easily have played in the girls' division and probably still would have lost while having just as much fun.
When the biological changes that come with teen puberty shifted the physical experience on the field in complex ways, the Primers' parents had thoughtful conversations and decided it was time for us to retire.
By then, several of our kids were able to make their way back to more traditionally gendered youth sports settings — including my own kid, now confident enough to do so even if they still don't fit in a very imperfect sex/gender system. All the Primers experienced real joy and development that are likely to remain with them the rest of their lives.
A few weeks ago, I was at a youth soccer game, and a player got hurt. I felt so proud as I watched my now 14-year-old and the other kids on the field drop to their knees together in recognition that respect, concern and a shared sense of care are deeper values than winning.
That struck me deeply.
The same social benefits so many of us develop through participation in sports — connection to others, appreciation for different strengths, understanding that we are stronger together — are precisely what's missing from the conversation about youth, gender and sports right now.
Perhaps it's time for us to get still, alert and attentive — and catch our breath and take a knee.