Administrator Who Forfeited Girls Game Against Male Opponent Explains Decision To OutKick

There's a law in Massachusetts that requires school athletics teams to allow players of the opposite gender to join a team as long as the school doesn't offer that same sport for their gender.

This has caused myriad safety concerns for female athletes in the state and the most common offender is field hockey. 

Field hockey is traditionally a girls' sport and most schools do not offer a boys' field hockey team. Under Massachusetts law, that means boys who want to play field hockey are free to try out for, and play on, the girls' team. 

As OutKick reported previously, a high school girl was badly injured during a playoff game in November after a male player hit her in the face with a shot. 

The girl "sustained significant facial and dental injuries," including the loss of two teeth.

As a result, her school district – Dighton-Rehoboth – adopted a policy allowing girls' teams to forfeit games rather than face an opponent with a male player. 

That policy was used to forfeit an upcoming match against Somerset-Berkeley, a team that has a boy on it. This is not the same school or the same boy as the one that injured the Dighton-Rehoboth girl in November, to be clear. 

Ryan Crook (right) is a boy who plays on the girls' field hockey team at Somerset-Berkley high school in Massachusetts.

(Ryan Feeney/Standard-Times Special/USA Today Network)

Dighton-Rehoboth Superintendent Bill Runey spoke to OutKick about the decision to forfeit the match against Somerset-Berkeley. 

He recounted the trauma that the girls faced after their teammate was badly injured. 

"I've dealt with a lot of traumatic experiences in my 37 years working in education – students passing away, staff members passing away, fires in buildings – and this ranks right up there with some of the more traumatic experiences that I've seen some of our students have to go through," Runey said. 

Not wanting to see the girls go through that experience again, Runey and the school committee adopted the policy allowing their district's teams to opt-out of games against squads with male opponents. 

"When we participated against Somerset-Berkeley last year, they had a boy on the team," Runey noted. "But until the severity of the injury happened, it was just something that we had to accept because it's the law." 

This is always the problem in these cases. No one can do anything about it until it's too late. 

It's incredibly unfortunate that a teenage girl had to experience physical trauma by taking a shot to the face by a much bigger and stronger teenage boy for people to be able to make changes. 

This isn't the first time that a girl was injured by a boy in Massachusetts high school field hockey, either. 

In 2010, a male player scored the game-winning goal in the Western Massachusetts Field Hockey Division I championship game after running over the female goaltender. 

His team, led by him and his brother, captured the state championship (and an undefeated season) and the girl was left badly concussed, reporting severe recurring headaches for six months after the incident. 

This male was 18 years old and also competed on the boys' hockey and lacrosse teams at his school, South Hadley. 

According to Boston.com, "The United States Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights… received a complaint filed against the [Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association]" in 2012 stemming from the MIAA allowing boys to play girls' field hockey. 

Obviously, that complaint didn't lead to any material changes because here we are, 12 years after that formal complaint, and another girl has suffered a major injury at the hands of a male opponent. 

What's interesting about the policy that Dighton-Rehoboth put in place, though, is that it allows teams to forfeit when the opponent has a male player. 

So, OutKick asked Runey: what if the opponent was a transgender athlete who identified as a girl but was born male? 

"The way that the policies written is it says, ‘someone of the opposite sex,’" Runey responded. "It's my understanding that if someone is in the student database as a female, then that's not considered the opposite sex." 

Superintendent of the Dighton-Rehoboth school district in Massachusetts, Bill Runey (pictured), tells OutKick why he allowed the girls field hockey team to forfeit a match rather than face a male opponent.

(Cameron Merritt/Taunton Daily Gazette/USA Today Network)

This is where all of these ridiculous laws and rules start to not make sense. We all understand that boys playing against girls, particularly in contact sports and especially in high school (after puberty), is not fair. 

Dighton-Rehoboth put a policy in place to stop that from happening. 

However, if that same boy who knocked teeth out of the mouth of a girl decided to start identifying as a girl himself, then Dighton-Rehoboth girls would have to play against his team. 

Does that make any sense to anyone? 

Shouldn't these examples of males injuring females be enough for everyone to say we're done with this nonsense? 

What about these boys stealing opportunities from girls? Runey told OutKick that girls are being displaced by those boys who are desperate to play high school field hockey. 

There are boys who are taking away playing time from girls?

Boys are taking opportunities away from girls on Massachusetts field hockey teams.

(Greg Derr/The Patriot Ledger/USA Today Network)

"Because they are bigger, they're faster, and they're stronger, boys are taking roster spots away from girls," he said. 

"So where's equality from that standpoint? Nobody seems to be advocating for the female who does not get as much playing time or the female who got cut from the team, because a boy was bigger, faster, or stronger." 

Well, fortunately, Superintendent Runey, people are starting to stand up and advocate for those girls. 

Riley Gaines, host of the OutKick podcast "Gaines for Girls" and one of the most influential pro-woman voices in the country, spends the majority of her time fighting for those women. 

There are members of the United States Senate – particularly Marsha Blackburn (Tennessee) – trying to make sure those girls and women are protected under the law. 

Runey took a strong first step for his girls by not forcing them to compete against a male on an unfair playing field. 

There's more work to do for all of us, but good for him for taking that step.