A biological male athlete – who is a “trans-identifying female” going by the name of AB Hernandez – won two titles in the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) Southern Section high school track and field postseason on May 17. He will proceed to the CIF State Championships on May 30.
Hernandez is a junior at Jurupa Valley High School in Jurupa Valley, California.
According to Sports Illustrated, “Hernandez’s winning long jump was 19 feet, 2.75 inches, beating out second-place finisher Katie McGuinness of La Canada 18-9.5.”
Hernandez was defiant, enthusiastic about his wins, finding it a triumph over “idiotic claims” about him being a biological male in women’s sports. He made the following comment in an interview with the outlet Capitol and Main:
“There’s nothing I can do about people’s actions, just focus on my own. I’m still a child, you’re an adult, and for you to act like a child shows how you are as a person,” he said in response to critics. “All I thought was, ‘I don’t think you understand that this puts your idiotic claims to trash. She can’t be beat because she’s biologically male.’ Now you have no proof that I can’t be beat.”
Katie McGuinness, who came in second place to Hernandez in the meet, was interviewed by Fox News on Wednesday. She described the events of what happened during the meet:
“I remember thinking to myself, ‘OK, I need to get a big jump,” the athlete said. “I ran down the runway and I landed and I watched them measure my mark, and it was 18.9 [less than a foot under Hernandez’s jump].”
She became discouraged after this result:
“And I just remember thinking that there was nothing else that I could do,” she said. “That was it. And I was honestly very discouraged, and I’m a high school senior and winning CIF has always been a goal of mine, and I wasn’t able to compete with someone who was genetically different than me.”
McGuinness commented on the subject of biological males competing in women’s sports:
“There are just certain genetic advantages that biological males have that biological girls don’t. Frankly, I just can’t stand for that,” she said.
