Doing The Right Thing

Here’s some news that cheered me up over the weekend:

A girls’ field hockey team from Dighton-Rehoboth (D-R) Regional High School in Massachusetts has forfeited a planned game on September 17th because their opponent, Somerset-Berkley, has a male on their team.
Dighton-Rehoboth cited its new policy, approved on June 25, that allows players and/or coaches to opt out of competitions if the opposing team includes a member of the opposite sex.

And they’re aware of the consequences:

“We understand this forfeit will impact our chances for a league championship and possibly playoff eligibility, but we remain hopeful that other schools consider following suit to achieve safety and promote fair competition for female athletes.”

I actually know a lot about this topic.

You see, back in high school I played for the 1st XI hockey team for most of my time there — I was reasonably skilled but the fastest runner on the team, and speed made up for a lot of shortcomings.

Just for the hell of it, the coach arranged for a match against two girls’ high schools on consecutive Sundays, played on our field.  Both were considered top in the field, perennial competitors for the girls’ area championship.  We, in contrast, were no more than mediocre (we only had forty-odd boys to draw from, as most of the school played rugby).

So we approached the first match with some trepidation, because of course we’d never played against girls.

After the first five minutes we realized that our opposition was hopelessly outclassed.  We were faster, more skilled and more game-savvy, and we scored three goals in the space of a few minutes.  Thereafter we decided that we would only run backwards, and the flow of goals slowed to only a couple by half-time.

At that point, the respective coaches decided to split us up, five each of either gender per side (the goalies were irrelevant).

Only then did everyone start enjoying themselves, but even then we boys had a tacit agreement to slow down and make most of our passes to the girls (“to” not “at”, you bad people) rather than just playing to win.

And it was great fun.  But make no mistake, there was absolutely no comparison between the sexes.  Had we boys not altered the format and played like we were playing one of our bitter rivals, there’s no telling how badly we would have beaten the girls.

So I can tell you that having even one boy playing on a girl’s team is going to make a huge difference, especially if that boy plays aggressively, like the boy in the linked article did.  (Shame on him, by the way.  Even at my advanced age, I’d love to play against him and show him what real –but quite legal — aggression is like when you have it inflicted on you*.)

Some things cannot be changed, no matter how many “valid” arguments are made in favor of the change.

And good for the folks at Dighton-Rehoboth for acknowledging that fact.


*That’s a tale for another time, but someone remind me to tell the story of Kim And The Beauty Queen some day.

11 comments

  1. Some of the girl players fathers should kidnap the father of the boy player and take him for a little ride out in the country and show him a thing or three.

  2. Back in 1998, the Williams sisters played exhibitions (1 set each) against the 203rd ranked men’s player, Kaarsten Brasch.

    Brasch beat Venus 6-1 and Serena 6-2.

    Then there’s the story of the U-16 boys team from the DFW metroplex beating the US women’s national soccer team like 5-1.

    It’s not close.

  3. The execrable Megan Rapinoe was on the defending world cup championship team that lost an exhibition match 5-2, to FC Dallas U-15. U-15 stands for under 15. The defending world cup champs – adult professionals all – were beaten by 13 & 14 year old boys.

    I think the woke gender horseshit first appeared on my radar 20-ish years ago, when Serena Williams had set some major record in the sport. NPR had John McEnroe on as the expert commentator to weigh in on it. During the interview, McEnroe called Williams the greatest women’s player of all time. NPR’s woke host said “Why do you call her the greatest women’s player? Why not just the greatest player?” McEnroe replied “Because she’s not. She couldn’t beat the 800th ranked player on the men’s side.”

    It instantly became a ridiculous, fabricated made-up controversy, and McEnroe took a ton of heat for it. Williams got sucked into the drama & gave an interview where she made it clear she didn’t completely agree with McEnroe. She said she probably could beat the 800th ranked men’s player. But certainly not the 100th ranked. She said she had a hard time playing against her male coach, and he’s not even a pro. He’s a… coach. She went on to say that given the physical disparities, she wasn’t so sure it could be said that men & women were even playing the same game.

    From NPR hacks offended by reality, we have naturally transitioned into the mainstreaming of mental illness – namely the trans movement. Bruce Jenner is a chick. If you disagree you’re not just wrong, you’re an evil bigot.

    One of the closing scenes in Orwell’s 1984 depicts the protagonist, Winston Smith. He’s finally betrayed and is now being tortured by the Ministry Of Truth. Their objective is to get him to proclaim as truth something he knows is not. The reader is forced to ask why – why all the time, effort & angst over an obvious lie? Then it hits you: the lie is the point. The truest measure of absolute power isn’t life or death. It’s controlling what people think.
    ,
    Will Thomas and his testicles are the U of Penn’s NCAA Female Athlete Of The Year because he and the left say so: the lie is the point. The Bud Light boy who had a sit down with POTUS isn’t a grown man. He’s a little girl, because he and Brandon say so: the lie is the point. The 14 yr-old boy who raped two girls in Loudoun County isn’t a boy. He’s a girl who belongs in the girls’ room with his victim, because he and left say so: the lie is the point. When the victim’s dad dared to speak up in front of the school board, he was arrested and jailed. Because that’s how we deal with heretics who commit the sin of wrong think: the lie is the point.

    The left is doubling down on all of it. Even in jurisdictions like Loudoun County where they’ve lost ground, it’s now become a fashion statement for woke board members to swear themselves into their current terms by placing their hand on the same gay kiddie porn they’re hell-bent on peddling to kids. Books like All Boys Aren’t Blue. Because woke scripture holds that school is where boys need to learn how to suck dick, and prepare themselves to be sodomized by adult members of their families.

    Here’s a concerned citizen reading from another canon of woke scripture, and therefore a must-read for kids: If you’re able to listen & not be repulsed – never mind the reality it’s being peddled to kids – do the world a favor and dive head first into a wood chipper. The board was sufficiently irked they killed his mic and had five cops haul his black ass out the door. Not because they were repulsed, but because they were exposed.

    The OG Marxists fractured their societies along class lines. Their current-day progeny are trying to do the same using race and gender. The Holy Church Of Woke desperately wants to normalize its delusion & depravity, and grooming kids is central to its crusade.

    /rant off

    1. The Lie is the point.

      Exactly! Some years ago, Theodore Dalrymple wrote:

      “In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better.
      When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is…in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.
      I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.

    2. In a few words, it’s simply about power. It’s about who has the power to proclaim an absurdity, and who must kneel in capitulation before it.

      As a disciple of the Transdendent Ethics of Liberty, all conflict is resolved. People have a natural, intrinsic right to define themselves on their own terms and by their own lights. This in no way creates any duty for anyone else to accept those terms. They do not get to unilaterally dictate terms for others. Thus, if someone identifies as FireTruck, that’s fine, as long as they don’t expect anyone to clear out of their way in traffic. Thus, the small number of cases where people’s authentic identies fall into edge and corner cases are acommodated, and the much larger number of cases where the issue is actually about power and mob belonging are exposed for what they are. And as for frustrated FireTrucks who wonder why no one clears their path when they make siren noises, well, that’s just how it is.

  4. IMO, *all* the teams shout forfeit the offending school right to whatever title is at the top of their league, without ever having played an actual game. Then they can hang that banner in their gym in abject shame.

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