When I signed my daughter up for girls’ volleyball I was nervous. My sweet eleven-year-old is already small for her age, so playing against girls is tough enough, but I knew the gender insanity would plague us.
She had already been forced out of one sport due to the myth that boys and girls are equal competitors. When she was 5-years-old I put her in karate. I’ll admit I imagined a karate kid-type training where she would be the small little girl who learned to defend herself against all odds.
Reality hit her pretty fast, though, because in karate, there are no gender divisions. The boys and girls compete against each other regularly. When I questioned this, the mother of a boy in her class said, “Don’t worry, the girls usually cream the boys.”
But I never once saw any of the little girls in class win when pitted against a boy, unless it was on a technicality or the boy was disqualified. I also noticed a strange pattern.
During class sparring games, where everyone fought to be the last kid standing, the weak boys went after the girls — especially my small little girl. Thankfully, the strong boys went after any of the boys who were trying to fight the girls, and that was something beautiful to witness. There was an instinctual chivalry still living in the boys who knew that they should not be competing against girls.
Even so, my daughter quit after her first tournament. She was too frustrated. She told me, “It’s not fair. The boys always win.”
After some time off she tried out volleyball at the local rec plex and had a great time playing against other little girls. But this year the girls’ division has changed. No longer is it full of little girls who just want to jump and run and bop a ball. There are multiple boys spread across the teams, and they’re not even pretending to be girls.
Last night, my daughter competed against four giant boys who pummeled the ball at her teammates. They dressed like boys, shouted like boys, and hit like boys. It was painful to watch. And the parents of these boys were shouting and clapping with pride.
This is the epitome of insanity. It was a clown show. I don’t even need to tell you how badly my daughter’s team lost, because it was bad from the start.
I’m fuming mad. When I coached, not one parent tried to enroll a boy on my team. And maybe that’s because if they had I would have raised hell. But now the parent coaches are the ones putting their boys on these girl’s teams.
Any sane person would contact the rec plex and suggest they start a boys’ league, which is clearly needed. But instead, they just enroll their boys on the girls team and the teenagers working the facility don’t say anything because they’ve been raised to just accept what everyone else does.
None of the parents have openly expressed any opposition because they don’t want to be that parent, the one who actually believes in a competitive sport. After all, we’ve been taught for decades now that “winning isn’t everything,” right?
But now my daughter is depressed. She’s anxious about her next game and her only goal is to just win one game this season. She doesn’t care about being the best, she just wants to know that her hard work means enough to win at least one time.
Now she keeps saying, “What’s the point of playing?”
I’m ready to pull the plug. I’m ready to raise hell and hire a lawyer, but she’s not sure she wants that and I want to respect her wishes.
This is the problem. This is why girls’ sports is dying. Girls are kind caring beings. They just want to be nice and have fun. So when someone comes in and craps all over their right to a fair competition, they don’t want to say anything because no one else will.
I’m not like that. I’m fighting the fight every damn day. But I know it’s not easy to be the child of a woman who won’t be pushed around.
My daughter will be punished no matter what I do. If I just go with it like everyone else we are complicit in the death of girls’ sports. I wish this had happened during my time as a competitive swimmer, because I would have fought as a child, I was always that annoying girl.
But now, if I rise up, my daughter still gets punished. I know this. We’ve been here before. Speaking up does nothing when it comes to community sports. Walking away does nothing either.
I need to talk to the other parents and see what they think, try to ban together. I don’t have much hope. Most people expect everyone else to fight these battles. But I’m going to try because no girl should have to play against a boy.
Our daughters deserve their rights and I will not sit back and watch others strip their hopes away.
Jessica Marie Baumgartner 
It makes me sad and sick