Oregon girls open up on 'traumatic' trans athlete experiences that pushed them to fight back

Fox News

05-06-2025

Oregon high school senior Alexa Anderson is now a budding conservative heroine, but she comes from a family of Democrats.
When the Tigard High School track and field star refused to stand on the same podium as a trans athlete at the state championship on Saturday, alongside fellow medalist Reese Eckard, Anderson learned right away the treatment an act like that prompted from the political side her family traditionally aligned with.
"When me and Reese stepped down there was definitely some confusion, there was definitely some anger and just a lot of people who didn't understand why were were doing this, and it was scary. Everyone was looking at us," Anderson told Fox News Digital. "There was a lot of people on and off the field. I heard shouts of them telling us to get out of the way."
The backlash did not end on the field.
"There has also been a handful of people that just really don't understand that are reaching out and are calling me a bad person," she added.
"When I received one of the first hate comments I kind of just brushed it off, I responded saying 'thank you for sharing your opinion, I respect your opinion, this is mine and this is what I stood for' but it didn't really bother me too much because I was prepared for it, I knew this was going to happen, and I have so many people behind me, supporting me and that number greatly outweighs the people who have been hateful toward me."
Anderson was warned by friends, coaches and family about what would happen if she took the stand she took. However, she felt she had to do something as soon as she found out she would be competing against the trans athlete last week. The teen considered withdrawing from the competition altogether, but could not bring herself to waste all of her hard work to get to that point. So she and Eckard came up with the podium idea.
Anderson had never even competed against a trans athlete herself in competition prior to that point, but she felt compelled to demonstrate her opposition for the sake of the other girls across the country, especially in her state, who have been impacted by trans inclusion.
One of those girls is Glencoe High School junior Lily Hammond.
As a sophomore in the winter of 2023-24, Hammond said she unknowingly competed against and shared a locker room with a biological male opponent on another team. She said she competed against the athlete multiple times, assuming the athlete was a biological female.
"It wasn't until the last meet that I realized 'oh, that is a trans person,' and by that point it was too late," Hammond told Fox News Digital. "The shock that came was the mistrust and the lying, I felt very betrayed, I felt betrayed by the adults and the coaches on the other team that let it happen without my consent and my knowledge. My team didn't know, my coach didn't know… I felt very violated knowing that a man could have seen me changing."
Hammond said she already had to deal with transgender students at her high school entering the girls' restrooms on a regular basis, but she called the experience with her swim team "traumatic."
"At the time it was overwhelming and felt traumatic since I was kept in the dark," she said.
Hammond is not the only Oregon girl "traumatized" by the issue either.
Forest Grove High School senior Maddie Eischen and Newberg High School junior Sophia Carpenter were faced with the prospect of competing against a trans athlete in a state competition called the Chehalem Classic back on April 18.
So both of them refused to compete.
"I found out the day before, which led to me feeling the need to scratch myself from the meet. The whole day I had anxiety," Eischen told Fox News Digital. "My experience at the Chehalem track meet and scratching myself from the meet was traumatic, something I never imagined ever having to do."
Carpenter said she found herself so overwhelmed with emotion from the experience, that she cried on the ride home after the meet.
"It was emotionally traumatic trying to know what I should do and how I should respond to competing with [the trans athlete]," Carpenter said.
The experience pushed Carpenter to make a visible point when she competed at the state championships this weekend. She showed up to her high jump competition sporting a T-shirt from the activist sportswear brand XX-XY Athletics.
Now, beyond just speaking up against the state's current laws that enable males in their sports, Anderson, Hammond and Carpenter suggested the issue will play heavily into how they vote in future political elections.
"Just this last election, looking at the different beliefs between the two candidates, you had one candidate who openly believes biological men should be allowed in women's restrooms and women's sports, and was not doing anything, and then you had another candidate who said 'this will be one of the first things I change,' and that's what Donald Trump did," Hammond said.
"In the future, that's something I'm going to look for."
Carpenter added, "I've always believed in voting based on the constitution… and while Title IX was not one of the first things that was brought up when our country was created, it goes back to the first amendment and basic human rights, and women deserve these rights too, and right now they're being given to men who feel a certain way."
Additionally, while the trans athletes that each of the girls faced played into their trauma, their stand against the state's liberal laws on the issue is not directed at those individuals. It is directed at the lawmakers and education officials who have enabled the males to get to that point.
"I feel that they've just been misled," Hammond said. "The faculty at my school is feeding this, the faculty at other schools are feeding this saying 'it's okay if you want to be another person.'"
In the last few days, Oregon has become one of the nation's heated battlegrounds on the issues, as the state represents symbolic significance in the sport of track and field. Eugene, Oregon, nicknamed "TrackTown USA," often hosts the World Athletics Championships, U.S. Olympic Trials and NCAA Championships.
Now, Anderson's stunt at the high school state championship has put the state under a national microscope and a legal firm has already taken steps to bring federal action against the state.
While the Trump administration has focused much of its attention on the issues in Maine and California, launching federal investigations and even a Department of Justice lawsuit against Maine, the America First Policy Institute (AFPI) filed a civil rights complaint calling for federal intervention.
"Our investigation into Title IX and First Amendment violations in Oregon is about standing up for girls and women sidelined, silenced, and stripped of the fairness and freedom they're guaranteed under federal law," AFPI senior legal strategy attorney Leigh Ann O'Neill told Fox News Digital.
"When young women are told to compete against male athletes or stay quiet—or, worse, are punished for speaking the truth—we have to act. Because no one is above the Constitution—not even state sports officials."
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